


Empty Your Basket

by pineapplecrushface



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Character Study Through Service Topping, Coming In Pants, Crying, Dom/sub Undertones, Eddie Kaspbrak Has a Pain Kink, Edging, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Praise Kink, Richie Tozier Has a Whatever Eddie Wants Kink, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Spanking, coming while being spanked
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 08:00:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26349748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineapplecrushface/pseuds/pineapplecrushface
Summary: Everyone else is doing great after Derry, but Richie and Eddie are still a little bit lost.The (totally, definitely platonic, absolutely just bros helping bros) spanking helps a lot though.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Bev Marsh (mentioned), Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon (Mentioned), Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stan Uris (Mentioned)
Comments: 117
Kudos: 668





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Can a bro not just ask another bro to spank him bare-assed until he cries? 
> 
> Title is from [Basket of Figs](https://poets.org/poem/basket-figs), by Ellen Bass.

Living together was not exactly as Richie had pictured it, if he had to be honest. Not in his wildest dreams, where Eddie busted through the door of his house, threw down his bags, and jumped Richie on the living room floor, and not in his most practical, realistic dreams where Eddie searched for a job and saved up enough money for his own place and moved out after a few months. Instead, Eddie had hermitted himself in one of Richie’s spare rooms, which he guessed was now Eddie’s room, for two weeks before he finally emerged for a meal, like a feral cat brought in from the outdoors. Richie would have been more worried about him, but Eddie communicated with him via text even when they were separated only by a wall, and reassured Richie that he was fine, he was just thinking and needed some quiet. Which, strangely enough, Richie was able to give him.

 _Take as long as you need to do whatever you need_ , Richie told him.

 _I’m sorry. I’m being a shitty guest. I promise I’ll take you out to dinner when I feel better_ , Eddie replied.

 _You’re not a guest. This is your house too for as long as you want it to be_ , Richie wrote, and then, unable to bear the sincerity of it, added, _Figured you’d need a few weeks to jerk off by yourself after being married for eight years_.

Eddie replied, as Richie assumed he would, _Can you NOT???_ and that was that, until one evening Eddie joined him in the living room.

“Police, police, there’s a handsome stranger in my house and I am but a helpless maiden,” Richie said, waving an imaginary fan. “My stars, what shall I do?”

“It really fucking sucks that you’ve gotten a thousand percent better at Voices but your sense of humor is stuck at age ten,” Eddie said.

“He has no weapon but his cruel words, officer.” Richie lay back against the couch with the back of his hand against his forehead. Without moving, he added, “I’m about to order food if you want in.”

“Yeah, I’m starving,” Eddie said. They ordered sushi, which Richie had suggested in the hopes that Eddie would find rice and vegetables and fish acceptable, and Eddie surprised him by carelessly ordering eel and fried crab and asking Richie if he had any wine.

“Are you all right?” Richie asked. “Did you turn into a bug for two weeks and get visited by your future bug self?”

“Don’t combine Kafka and Dickens, man, that’s gross,” Eddie said. “I’m fine. I’m not allergic to any of this shit, and I like the way it tastes. I’m—well, I’m not good. I’m getting there, maybe.”

“Yeah? What’s good for Eddie Kaspbrak?” Richie asked, picking up a piece of dragon roll with his fingers just to see Eddie shake his head in disgust.

“Good is…good is hanging out with my friend and not worrying about what I’m eating or drinking.” Eddie was tucked up in the corner of the couch, his eyes on the coffee table covered in food instead of Richie. He looked small and concerned, like the Eddie of Richie’s youth. The Richie of Richie’s youth had wanted to put his arms around him; the Richie of Richie’s adulthood wanted to add a kiss to his lovely, tired face.

“That _is_ good,” Richie said. “Got any plans? I mean, you don’t have to. I’m a big fan of not having plans, actually.”

“I don’t know. I feel—not lost. Untethered,” Eddie said, and grimaced. The stab wound on his cheek had messed up the muscles there forever, and his expression was a little bit lopsided. It didn’t seem to bother him, which was a hot topic between Richie and Stan and Bill. Ben and Bev and Mike weighed in, but they hadn’t known Eddie since birth the way the others had, and hadn’t seen him fret over a splinter until he worked himself into a frenzy and Richie had to do something stupid to distract him. The lack of concern over the ridge of scar tissue on his cheek and the discolored line on his back, even after it got infected and he had to have a skin graft, was disturbing. Richie was certain Eddie was making peace with it alone, and that once he was done he would talk about it. He needed to wrestle with things sometimes, but he always told Richie what he was thinking about in the end, and then Richie teased him a little to make him feel normal before he reassured him. That was how they had always worked, how they still worked. 

“How do you want to feel?” Richie asked.

“I want to feel clear-headed.” He rubbed his forehead and shook his head, like he thought what he was saying was stupid. “I feel like my head is full of cotton all the time.”

“Me too,” Richie said. “I don’t know how much of that is being an adult who hasn’t slept in thirty years and how much is the clown.”

“Exactly.” Eddie drew his knees up and put his arms around them. “I don’t fucking know how to get rid of it. I went off all the pills I was taking. That’s one thing.”

“Jesus, is that what you were doing in there, all by yourself?” Richie asked. His imagination provided an image, almost completely fictional, of Eddie sweating and shivering through detox on the Porthault sheets Eddie had brought with him.

“No, I did that in New York,” Eddie said, waving his hand. “Myra wouldn’t even listen to me when I said I wanted a divorce at first because she thought I wasn’t in my right mind, but I was fine.”

“Of all the times for you to stop being an insane hypochondriac,” Richie said. “Did you just go cold turkey? What the fuck, man, you can’t tell me this stuff. It’s gonna show up in my nightmares.”

“I fucking tapered off, okay, I’m not trying to die,” Eddie said. “I thought I’d feel better, but I don’t. Doesn’t it seem like everyone else is great? They all dumped their baggage and they’re doing so well.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t dumped any of my baggage,” Richie said. “I figured it was just me.”

“What’s your baggage?” Eddie asked, standing up and wandering toward the kitchen to grab the bottle of wine. He had to slide past Richie, who was still nibbling on sushi, to get back into his little corner of the couch, and as he twisted his hips to fit through the narrow space between Richie’s knees and the edge of the coffee table, Richie’s hand shot out and smacked him on the ass without permission or even acknowledgment from him, landing with a muffled _thwap_.

The detonation of mortification in his stomach that followed was so intense that he stood up, and then had to figure out a reason he might have needed to stand up that was not accidentally spanking his best friend, leaving the state, and assuming a new identity.

“Sorry,” he said, forcing himself to smile casually as he wiped his hands on his thighs and went to grab another beer. “You put your ass right in my face.”

“Fuck you, dude, you couldn’t just move out of the way and let me go by like a normal fucking person,” Eddie said, retreating to the corner again. The flush on his face and the way he held his drink were the only indicators of how much alcohol he’d had, but he seemed unusually shifty-eyed.

“Just couldn’t keep my hands off that tight little ass,” Richie said when he’d returned with his beer. That was the nice thing about being who he was: he could say true things and everyone thought he was joking.

“Did you ever do that?” Eddie asked abruptly. “Spank someone? Or, um, get spanked?”

Richie’s eyes went wide. “I,” he said before his brain caught up to his dick. “I think you’re overestimating how long people want to have sex with me. I’ve never made it to the kinky sex discussion.” 

“Oh.” Eddie shrank further into the couch.

Richie took a deep breath, because he hated to see Eddie fold in on himself even more than he was afraid to delve into sex talk that might potentially border on the truth. “What about you? Get to smack some ass?”

Eddie shook his head. “I never wanted to be the…the smacker.”

“The smackee?” His heart was going wild and he was frantically picking at the beer label because if he didn’t, he’d throw it in the air and run around the house screaming, then leave the state and assume a new identity. All his internal freakouts ended with him in witness protection; even his therapist didn't think it was outside the realm of possibility. “You want to get spanked, Eds?”

Eddie stared at nothing very intensely for a second before his mouth tightened and he nodded.

“Well,” Richie said around the alarms going off in his brain. “I did just spank you. I can do it again if you want.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie snapped. “You don’t have to make fun of me.”

“I’m not,” he said, though he could feel the corners of his mouth twitching up into the hysterical laughter of his usual panic response. “If you want to see what it feels like, I can do it. I’m your friend, I won’t make fun of you. Okay, no, I will make fun of you, but not in a mean way. Then you’ll have some experience for when it’s the real thing.”

Eddie’s face was still very, very red, but he wasn’t shrinking anymore and he was meeting Richie’s eyes, a little scared and a little defiant. “I want it to hurt,” he said. “A lot.”

“Is that,” Richie said, and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “You like that? Pain?”

Eddie watched him, searching, probably trying to see if Richie was fucking with him. Whatever he saw, it made him relax. “Yeah. It feels good, and it calms me down.”

“Really,” Richie said. “Okay. Does it, like—do you want it as punishment, or just because?”

“J-just because,” Eddie said. “I don’t, um. I don’t need to be punished.”

But that was a lie, and Richie knew it because he always knew when Eddie was lying. He would have liked to believe it was because he knew Eddie better than anyone else, but Eddie was a terrible liar and a newborn baby could see the way he twitched and looked away. Richie wasn’t about to press him on it, though. It seemed like maybe it was an emotional thing, probably something he’d prefer to share with a partner, not a friend. He suddenly imagined Eddie asking someone else to punish him and was consumed by a ferocious wave of jealousy.

“Fine,” he said, tight and irritated. Eddie looked confused and he softened. “Sorry, that wasn’t about you. You wouldn’t need to be punished anyway. You’ve always been a good boy.”

Eddie’s eyes widened and he almost spilled his drink—just a little twitch, enough for Richie to notice. “Uh,” he said. “Do you want—right now? Can we do it right now?”

“Yeah,” he said. “If you want, yeah.”

Eddie bolted up and put his drink on the table. “Yeah, I want to know if I like it in reality, you know? Better to figure it out now, with you. I know you won’t—I mean, I’m asking you to hurt me, but I know you won’t _hurt_ me.”

“Okay,” Richie said, and stood up, then sat down again. “Wait. Do you want to do it over my lap, or what? Is that too weird?”

“It’s not too weird,” Eddie said fast.

“Okay,” Richie said again. “Good.”

They stared at each other for a second before Eddie stumbled over and knelt on the couch beside him. “Maybe,” he began. He smelled so good. Richie was dizzy.

“Maybe?”

“We should probably start through the pants,” he said.

“Oh,” Richie said, wide-eyed. He hadn’t even thought about other options. The idea of spanking Eddie on his bare ass was so much that his breath went all weird. “Yeah, I’ll just have to hit harder.”

Eddie closed his eyes. His breath was weird too, which made Richie feel better. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I want it really hard.”

 _Holy shit_ , Richie thought. _Holy shit. Holy shit_. He wasn’t totally foreign to the feeling of being stupid horny, the sort of honey thick slowness that enveloped everything around him, but he’d never let himself get to that point around Eddie. Maybe once or twice as a kid, when they were wrestling and Eddie seemed like he wanted to touch Richie as much as Richie wanted to touch him, but he was so scared Eddie might sense that he was turned on that he’d always do something stupid to fuck it up, distract them both. Anything so Eddie wouldn’t know.

“And can you do it a lot?” Eddie asked.

“A lot?”

“Yeah, it’s just—in videos they always do like five smacks and then stop,” he said.

“In _porn_ , you mean,” Richie said, grinning.

“Fine, yes. In _porn_ ,” Eddie sighed. “They don’t do it enough. I want to feel it for a while afterward. Okay?”

“Yeah, man, whatever you want,” he said. His voice sounded really loud to his own ears, but that was probably from the blood rushing through them. “Well. Hop on it.”

He gestured to his thighs, and Eddie shot him a quick little half-lidded glance, then leaned forward so he was on hands and knees, hovering over Richie’s legs. His t-shirt rode up a little in the back and hung down in the front, and Richie observed, as one who might be going mad and didn’t mind it at all, that the material of his pants was a little thicker than jeans, and he would have to slap pretty hard for Eddie to feel it.

“This feels so weird,” Eddie said with a nervous laugh.

“Do you want to stop?” Richie asked.

“No,” he said slowly. “But I think you might have to—can you push me down?”

He rested his hand on the small of Eddie’s back, and Eddie hung his head when he started to rub the soft skin there in little light circles.

“Is that too much?” Eddie whispered.

“No,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about too much, Eds. Just—just take what you need.”

“God, okay,” Eddie said, his voice shaking, and when he shifted back, Richie put an arm around his middle and pulled him closer to his chest, then forced him down, a surprisingly heavy weight on his lap. Eddie was balanced awkwardly with his bare toes digging into the couch cushion, his upper half arched as he braced himself on his forearms. Richie leaned over and grabbed a couple of pillows to shove underneath him and Eddie buried his face in one of them.

His dick was so hard. How had he not thought ahead and realized this would be a problem? How was he going to get through this without coming all over himself? He worried for a moment that Eddie could feel it, but he was just far enough away not to touch it, and Eddie, as far as he could tell, was too overwhelmed to notice much of anything.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Rich—god, yes. Yes,” Eddie moaned. He was burning hot against Richie’s legs, trembling and tense but malleable when Richie rearranged him so his ass was within an easy range of motion.

He lifted his hand, and then paused. “Do you want to count off?”

“No,” Eddie choked out. “I don’t want to know. I want you to…”

“You want me to have control?” Richie said gently when it seemed like Eddie couldn’t speak anymore.

“I—please.” Eddie turned his head just enough so Richie could see the desperation on his face. “Please.”

“It’s okay,” Richie said, rubbing his back again, all the way up and down his spine. “Don’t worry about anything. You don’t have to think if you don’t want to.”

Eddie made a wild, cut-off noise, then hid his face in the pillow again, and Richie lifted his hand.

 _Okay_ , he told himself. _Give him what he wants, and make it good_.

The first strike didn’t hurt him. It was just stinging heat, and he knew it wasn’t hard enough, but Eddie jolted anyway. He reached across Eddie’s back to hold onto him again and tried a second time, much harder, and then it did hurt a little bit. He liked it, though.

“Eds? Is it enough?” he asked.

“No,” Eddie panted. “Sorry. It doesn’t hurt very much.”

 _Jesus Christ_ , he mouthed. “You need it on bare skin?” he asked.

“ _Yes_. I’m sorry. God, I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Richie said. “Just lift up a little and I’ll get you.”

He felt Eddie dig his knees in and lift his hips, and reached under him, into the hot humid space between them, to undo his pants. His fingers brushed against Eddie’s stomach as he unbuttoned and unzipped, and he heard Eddie moan fitfully, felt him shiver. _He likes that so much_ , he thought, and shoved it away because it wasn’t any good knowing what Eddie liked.

Once his pants were undone, Richie tugged them down in the back, along with his underwear, until they were just under his ass, then pressed his hips back down. Richie didn’t consider himself an ass man, but he loved Eddie’s, round and firm under his hand, pale against the frame of his gray t-shirt and dark pants. He stroked the underside for a moment, unable to stop himself from one small tender gesture before he smacked the same spot so hard he felt the reverberation up through his shoulder.

It was so much better skin to skin—shockingly better. Eddie shouted into the pillow and Richie knew it was a sound of pleasure as much as pain. He watched the mark go white, then dark pink blooming against the pale skin, mesmerized.

“Is it good now, Eds?” he asked. It was. He knew it was.

Eddie nodded and Richie, remembering his request to make it last, to make it hurt, got to work.

The sting in his hand that began at the second strike grew and grew until it was a constant buzzing ache around strike thirty or forty. It helped to alternate sides, and when he stopped going back and forth on a steady basis and hit one side of Eddie’s ass five or six times in a row and then surprised him by switching to the other, Eddie shocked under him and started to moan, long and agonized. He kept turning his head to the side to gasp for a little while and then rubbing his face in the pillow again, shaking his head like he was rejecting something, and Richie wanted to ask him whether he needed to stop, but he knew Eddie would tell him when he was done. And Eddie—Eddie wanted him to take control. He almost couldn’t believe it, but he supposed it made sense. If he wanted to be punished—and Richie really thought he did—then he wouldn’t want to know what was coming, regardless of how well he orchestrated it beforehand. The next time they did it—

God, he hoped there would be a next time. If Eddie asked him to forget it, he’d never bring it up again, but there was something inside him that felt like it had been hiding behind a door and was just now peering out, that he had never suspected was there before. He _liked_ this. Richie Tozier was not a sadist—hated causing pain, even when he was doing it out of self-defense—but he knew this wasn’t about causing pain. It was about giving Eddie what he wanted. That was something he could and would do, enthusiastically, joyfully, without question.

He had been counting without realizing it the entire time, and somewhere around sixty, he had to stop because his wrist began to cramp.

“Don’t stop,” Eddie moaned.

“I’m not stopping, sweetheart,” he said, and winced, shaking his head. Eddie didn’t react to it, and it was too late for him to make a joke out of it, so he blundered on. “Just a break. Don’t worry, I’ll give you more.”

While he did quick carpal tunnel stretches with his right hand on the back of Eddie’s thigh, he ran the fingers of his left hand over Eddie’s lower back, very light, rubbing against the grain of the fine peach fuzz there. Eddie tensed under him but didn’t say anything while Richie watched the goosebumps rise and die down again.

Without warning, because Eddie had said he didn’t want one, he started up again, back, forth, back, forth, his hand screaming at him after only a few hits, but he thought it was hurting Eddie much more, based on the way he twisted a little to get away from each blow.

“Fuck,” Eddie said thickly. “It hurts, it fucking _hurts_.”

But he said it like it was pleasure instead, and even as his body cringed away from Richie’s hand, he seemed to sink deeper and deeper into relaxation. His fingers were clenched tight in the pillow but the rest of the upper half of his body was loose, and after a while it spread to his lower half and he was more draped across Richie than perched there with his ass up.

Finally, when Richie’s hand was so cramped and swollen he was about to ask Eddie to switch sides so he could try with his left, Eddie sobbed, “Stop, please, I’m done.”

Richie let up right away and rested his throbbing hand in the space between Eddie’s thighs, rubbing his thumb back and forth there without thinking about it. He'd been outside himself, somehow, every part of his mind and his body tunneled deep into giving it to Eddie as hard as he needed. He came back into himself with a thud, realizing he was sweaty, his shirt sticking to him and suddenly cold when he leaned away from the couch, and his dick was still so hard that his underwear was wet. Eddie’s t-shirt was dark in patches all along his back too, but all Richie could see was the deep red of his ass, almost purple, fading to pink where his smacks had turned inconsistent toward the end and he had drifted to the sides rather than directly on the curve. The skin looked so painful, glowing and swollen, that his hand seemed like nothing in comparison. He thought he could probably melt an entire snow bank right now, like a cartoon character, but Eddie’s ass could melt through a frozen lake.

He opened his mouth to ask Eddie if he should get some ice, but stopped when he heard the noise Eddie made, muffled into the pillow. Richie knew that noise, unfortunately, like the back of his own aching hand—the sound of Eddie trying and failing not to cry. As a kid, Eddie was always halfway to tears or rage or laughter at any moment. Eddie had told him, when they were still in Derry, that he wasn’t like that anymore, but as soon as he remembered the clown it all came back. “I’m all over the fucking place,” he had said. “I hate it, it just keeps bubbling out of me and I can’t control anything.” Richie, who hadn’t cried for ten years before having a complete meltdown in the hospital waiting room while Eddie was being stitched up, declined to comment.

“ _Eddie_ ,” he whispered, tugging him up off his lap.

“It _hurts_ ,” Eddie gasped, and burst into noisy, jagged tears, clinging to Richie like he wasn’t the one who had hurt him. Richie tried to hold him so his ass wouldn’t come into contact with anything, but it was impossible and he kept relaxing against Richie’s leg and then jerking away.

“Hold on, come here,” Richie said, twisting to lie down on the couch and drag Eddie on top of him. He gritted his teeth when Eddie’s hip rested against his still half-hard dick, hoping it wouldn’t decide that the pressure felt good, but apparently the misery of making Eddie cry was enough to finally wreck his libido. He gathered Eddie close and Eddie clenched his fists in Richie’s shirt, shoved his face into his neck, and cried so wildly that Richie was startled into holding him even tighter, like he was a baby and Richie was protecting him from danger.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Eddie hiccupped against his neck.

“Shh, don’t be sorry,” Richie said. He wanted to tell Eddie he hadn’t meant to make him feel awful, that he was sorry he had hurt him so much, but it didn’t seem like Eddie was upset with him exactly, just upset in general. He ran a hand all the way up to his neck and down to the bare curve at the small of his back, slowly, over and over again, while Eddie wound himself all the way up, sobbing so hard Richie wondered uneasily where his inhaler was, and then back down again in gradual steps.

He turned his face away from the mess he had made of Richie’s shirt after a while, sniffling and resting his head on the relatively dry fabric of Richie’s collar. His breathing was exhausted and shaky, but he wasn’t wheezing and he didn’t seem angry, so Richie let himself feel less guilty and more confused.

“Eds,” he whispered. “Are you okay? Did I kill you?”

Eddie shook his head, but didn’t move, not even to pull up the back of his pants. The evening light had finally gone and it was night, always a soft and sentimental time for him. Richie loved the slide from afternoon to night in California, melancholy as it was, in a way he had hated it in New England, and he liked it even more with Eddie in his arms. He was suffused with sudden good feeling and realized something about the entire incident had pumped him full of endorphins, which was, after being drunk or high, probably the most dangerous state for him to be in around Eddie, even when Eddie wasn't half undressed and on top of him.

“All right, buddy, it’s time for bed,” Richie said, jostling Eddie from side to side. He helped him kneel and then stand up in slow, tired movements. Eddie held onto him and made a low pained noise when Richie slid his underwear up over his ass. He didn’t bother with his pants, which fell down his legs until Eddie kicked them off as Richie led him down the hall to his room. He flipped on the light and immediately turned it off again when Eddie winced, feeling his way into the room to turn on the bedside lamp. In the gentle light, he could see how puffy Eddie’s eyes were. He looked like he was about to fall sleep where he was standing, still clutching Richie’s arm.

“Don’t go,” he said.

“You’re not pissed at me?” Richie asked.

Eddie shook his head, stumbling toward the bed and flopping down onto it face first.

“You probably, um,” Richie said. “You probably need lotion or something.”

“Bathroom,” Eddie mumbled. The cabinet and counters in the ensuite were covered with little jars of cream, vitamin bottles, brushes and tweezers and clippers. It took Richie a while to locate a regular bottle of lotion that didn’t promise to tighten, smooth, clarify, or detoxify anything. Eddie turned his head and blinked sleepily at him when he came out of the bathroom, then squirmed around and, as Richie watched frozen in shock, shoved his underwear down and kicked them off.

“Oh my fucking god,” Richie said. “Am I. I guess? I’m putting the lotion on?”

His voice got higher as he spoke, finally cracking at the end. Eddie nodded, still slow and tired. He was so out of it, Richie thought, that it felt like he was taking care of a drunk friend. But he wouldn’t be able to tease Eddie in the morning when he was sober. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to tease Eddie about this.

“I guess I’m putting the lotion on,” he said, sitting down on the bed beside Eddie’s hip. The soft dark blue duvet was so comfortable that Richie made an involuntary noise of pleasure, then hoped Eddie wouldn’t think it was directed toward his bare ass. He put a hand on Eddie’s back to push up his t-shirt so he wouldn’t get lotion on it, then squirted a bunch of it into his palms and rubbed them around to warm it. _It’s not fucking lube_ , he told himself, annoyed by the unwelcome, beautiful vision of slicking up his fingers and sliding them down between Eddie’s legs, inside him. But he was glad he had warmed it up anyway, because Eddie’s skin was so hot that the room temperature lotion made him groan into the pillow.

“Sorry. God, poor Eds, it must hurt,” he said nonsensically, rubbing his left hand, the one that didn’t feel like he’d slammed it in a door, over Eddie’s ass. Eddie tensed at the slightest pressure, rocking against the bed and back into Richie’s hand. His thighs spread and Richie tried not to look down, but he needed to run his hand under the roundest part of Eddie’s ass and so he had to look, had to glide his fingertips down between his legs, smoothing over the soft skin and hair there until he brushed against the back of his balls. Richie wondered if they hurt too, if the impact of the spanking echoed there. Eddie jumped and groaned even louder, the muscles of his ass flexing, and Richie snatched his hand away, setting the lotion on the bedside table and standing up. He stared at the bottle and considered stealing it and using it to jerk off the second he left Eddie’s room, but Eddie turned his head again and caught Richie’s hand, the one that hurt.

“Please don’t go,” he said.

“I have to go to bed,” Richie said stupidly, then shook his head. “I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep, if you want.”

Eddie pulled him back down until he was sitting again, pressed against Eddie’s (naked, absolutely bare ass naked) hip, and then he let go of Richie’s hand. “Thank you,” he whispered. Richie watched him for a moment—his pink, swollen eyes and nose, his tired sweet face, absolutely trusting Richie for some fucking reason—before he helplessly reached out to soothe further, fingers running up and down Eddie’s back, up and down.

“You’re so tired, huh, Eds,” he murmured. Eddie made a drowsy affirmative noise and closed his eyes. “Poor Eds. I know things have been hard. You’ve been kicking ass all the time, no wonder you’re tired.”

Eddie was asleep, his mouth open against the pillow, not quite snoring but making a little soft _kuh_ noise with each inhale. Richie brushed the sweat-damp hair from his forehead and left before he went crazy and kissed Eddie’s cheek, and the second he closed the door behind him he fell back into himself again and had to lean against the wall for a minute with his hands over his face. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck,” he whispered to himself, then stood up and went to get an ice pack for his hand, stripped down to his underwear, crawled into bed, and slept without dreaming for ten hours.

Eddie was already in the kitchen when he went out to make coffee the next morning, oblivious to the sight of Richie rounding the corner, jumping so hard he hit the wall behind him, and standing with his hand over his heart until he recovered.

“Morning, Eds,” he said levelly, like a normal person who had not just nearly pissed himself at the sight of his best friend and roommate in the kitchen.

“Oh, hey,” Eddie said, flicking a glance over his shoulder at Richie. The back of his neck began to turn pink, spreading to his ears, while Richie watched. _Oh_ , Richie thought, suddenly feeling very flushed himself. _He’s so embarrassed_. The realization pushed away his own not inconsiderable embarrassment—he had writhed around in his bed for a while after he’d woken up, until he was able to stand back and observe himself and laugh, thinking about how he’d describe what had happened to someone else, should he ever have the nerve or desire to do so: playing up his own dorky, horny desperation to please Eddie, exaggerating the stupidity of getting himself into the situation in the first place—and in its place he was filled with the need to make it normal. Eddie deserved not to feel bad about asking for, and getting, what he wanted.

“So,” Richie began, flexing his hand and leaning against the refrigerator. “How’s your ass?”

Eddie stopped messing with Richie’s coffee machine—he kept trying to make it steam almond milk, failing, and then yelling at it before he gave up and had tea—and stood still. “It hurts,” he said eventually, his voice uneven.

“Yeah, no fucking wonder,” Richie said. “I think I broke my hand. My ice pack melted all over the bed.”

“You might have sprained it.” Eddie turned around and grabbed his hand, examining his palm. He poked the groove between his middle and ring fingers, and Richie hissed at the pulse of pain through both knuckles. “You need to have it looked at.”

“Dude, you know I’m not going to,” Richie said, and when Eddie opened his mouth, he pulled his hand away and held it up in surrender. “I’ll wrap it up in an ace bandage, and I’ll use my left hand to jerk off.”

Eddie lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “Get insurance, fucker. You’re old and fucking frail.”

“Not too frail to spank you until you can’t sit down,” Richie said. Eddie went pink again, and this time Richie got to watch it spread from his forehead all the way down his neck and under the collar of his t-shirt. He was wearing loose, silky shorts, and Richie was dying to know how they felt against his ass, what it looked like, how he had felt when he woke up.

“I might be able to sit down,” Eddie said. “I haven’t tried yet.”

“Are you all right?” he asked, because that was what he was really dying to know.

“Yeah.” Eddie looked puzzled for a second, then gave him a thoughtful smile. “That was the best night of sleep I’ve ever had. Seriously. I feel—great. I feel fucking awesome.”

Startled, Richie realized he agreed. His hand did hurt—and all teasing aside, he probably was going to have to jerk off with the left one for a while—but he had woken up refreshed, cheerful, filled with the kind of sunshiny wellbeing that he couldn't even remember feeling as a kid.

“Shit,” he said. “Me too. But I mean—it was all right? I didn’t fuck it up?”

Eddie’s eyes fluttered shut and then slowly opened again, a little dazed. “You didn’t fuck it up,” he said in a low voice. “It was good.”

“Yeah?” he asked.

“You made me _cry_ ,” Eddie said, like that was an answer.

“I know. I thought I broke you.”

“You did. It was…awesome," Eddie said with a little amazed laugh.

They were close enough that Richie could see the faintest remnants of his childhood freckles spread across his nose, just a little spray of them that Richie had always wanted to kiss. He had done it once. Kindergarten, on the playground behind the jungle gym. Eddie had given Richie the bulldozer Tonka truck and instructed him to scoop up the pile of grass and dirt he had just made. Richie, overwhelmed by affection because the bulldozer was Eddie’s favorite and he never let Richie play with it, kissed him on the nose. Eddie batted at him and said it tickled, then told Richie to _do it right, Richie, scoop it up the way you’re_ supposed _to_.

“Whatever you need, Eds,” he said lightly, leaning away so he wouldn’t give a repeat performance. “I’m. Um, I’m here for you. You know that.”

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie said, his eyebrows bowed together in a little worried bridge. “Thanks, Rich.”

“Any time,” he said, sliding out of the kitchen before he begged Eddie to let him do it again. “But I’m not here to clean up the sushi from last night, Eds. That’s on you.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie said, peering around the wall to look at the mess on the coffee table. “Dude. Fuck you.”

“Have fun with that, time to make the donuts,” Richie said, fleeing upstairs to his office, where he wrapped himself up in his coziest hoodie, opened up his laptop to work, and watched eight episodes of House Hunters instead.


	2. Chapter 2

Richie didn’t see much of Eddie for the next few days. He wouldn’t have admitted that he had hastily scheduled a bunch of meetings with his team that he’d been putting off, but he didn’t want to be in the house while Eddie either retreated to his cave again or hung out in the common areas and wanted to talk. Or not talk. Either prospect was terrible. Richie could just imagine himself sitting there in silence, slowly going crazy with curiosity. He wanted to know if Eddie had had trouble sitting down, if his ass still hurt. If he was bruised. He didn’t like the idea of hurting Eddie on a permanent basis, but he imagined Eddie looking at the marks on his ass, fading every day, pressing down on them to make them hurt again, and he went fucking wild. His dick was in a state of distress that he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager and he’d first had the realization that he wasn’t the only boy who jerked off. Other boys did it too; _Eddie_ did it. Eddie had once told him that he thought it was disgusting and would never do it, but that was before puberty and Richie had teased him so much about his dick purity that Eddie had exploded at him and said Richie didn’t have to be such a fucking _freak_ about it, which told him two things: he needed to stop talking about jerking off or everyone would notice, and Eddie had definitely changed his stance on choking the chicken. He remembered how much his entire body would light up with chills when he thought _Eddie does this. Eddie touches himself_.

_Well, you haven’t grown out of that_ , he thought, rubbing his arms to get rid of the goosebumps.

After five days, Eddie texted him and said _Hey, do you want to get sushi again?_

_Is that code for something or do you really want to get sushi?_ Richie asked.

_Don’t be fucking stupid, get me sushi_ , Eddie replied, and then, nearly two minutes later, _We can talk about the other thing too if you want._

He did not want. He did want—no, he wanted Eddie to come to him and ask without words to repeat the incident, and he would give Eddie exactly that. The more speaking was involved, the more likely it was that he would say something he didn’t want Eddie to know. Like _I’m in love with you, you freakish handsome anxiety sponge_. He was a little worried about that one getting away from him.

He let Eddie pick what they watched and proceeded to not pay attention to it at all, or the sushi. Eddie apparently intended to try the entire menu and had ordered enough for four people, but Richie never remembered any of it afterward. All he remembered was the moment Eddie muted the television, set down his drink, and said, “I guess we should talk about it.”

“Should we though?” he asked. “Not talking has gone really well for us.”

“Dude, my stomach is like, eating itself,” Eddie said, clenching his fists with such an agonized look on his face that Richie resolved to not say anything stupid.

“That’s because you’re a freakish, handsome anxiety sponge,” Richie said, and resolved to die instead.

“Fuck you.” Eddie scowled. “Aren’t you bothered at all? What we did wasn’t exactly normal.”

“Who gives a fuck about normal? It felt good, right? Don’t question shit that feels good and doesn’t hurt you. I mean, permanently,” Richie said. It was great advice, and moreover, he believed it. For other people.

“Okay,” Eddie said slowly. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t actually care if it’s normal or not. I just wanted to know if you did. You talk a big game, Trashmouth, but you can be real fucking judgmental.”

Richie threw his hands up. “Did I not unquestioningly spank your ass the other day—at the expense of my own masturbation, I might add—and then put fucking eighty-dollar lotion on it?”

Eddie grinned. “Okay, fine, you did. That was very magnanimous of you.”

“Yes. Fucking thank you,” Richie said. “Are we good? Are you satisfied that I’m not texting Bill about how you forced me to get into leather daddy gear and whip you?”

Eddie stared at him narrowly for a second. “It’s weird how easy it is to imagine you as the guy from the Village People,” he said. “God, you’d look so stupid.”

“What, me in a jaunty leather cap? That’s fucking _art_ ,” Richie said. “What does that make you, anyway? The little cowboy dude? The construction guy?”

“I could pull off cowboy or construction dude _easy_ ,” Eddie said, slicing his hand through the air. “You would look _so_ dumb with a handlebar mustache.”

“Just for that, I’m growing one out, _and_ I’m gonna get some aviator sunglasses,” Richie said.

“Get the chaps too so you can really complete the look with your hairy ass hanging out,” Eddie said.

“How did this become about my ass? My manly, virile, masculine ass?” he asked.

“I bet it looks like a fucking fox tail stuffed in a sock,” Eddie hissed, and fuck, this kind of shit was exactly why he could never get over Eddie. Nobody else ever gave it back to him like Eddie Kaspbrak. He felt high just messing with him for five minutes.

“ _Anyway_ ,” he said. “Isn’t this sushi meeting about your ass?”

“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t—I don’t know, secretly disgusted.” The corner of Eddie’s mouth twisted in a way Richie understood quite well. 

“Not disgusted at all,” he said. “Curious, maybe.”

“About?”

“Well,” Richie said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did you know you liked it when we were kids?”

“Uh, yeah.” Eddie rubbed the back of his neck and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. “I used to, uh. Sometimes in TV shows or movies, someone would get spanked. I’d steal my mom’s TV Guide, find out if they were going to show it again, and tape it, then watch it over and over again. Or like—if someone said their parents were going to spank them, even if they were joking, I always remembered that and waited for them to talk about it again. But I wouldn’t ask or even say the words out loud because it felt like everyone would know how into it I was. I don’t know why. I never got punished. My mom would lock me up in the house, but it wasn’t supposed to be a punishment. It was supposed to be for my own good.”

He paused, glancing at Richie, his eyes big and pleading.

“It’s okay if you want to be punished,” Richie said softly.

Eddie closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked down at the floor again. “She made me so afraid of pain. I just wanted to be told I had done something bad, and get spanked for it.”

“So there’s, like, a mental component to it?” Richie asked.

Eddie nodded, slow and hesitant. “I know it’s weird. I don’t get it. It’s embarrassing, but the embarrassment feels good too.”

“Nothing wrong with wanting to feel good,” Richie said.

Eddie nodded again, not looking up.

“Uh,” Richie said, feeling like Eddie was waiting on him for something. “Do you want to do it again?”

Eddie sat up straight. “Yes, please,” he said breathlessly. “If you want to.”

Richie took stock of the situation fast. He was just in jeans and a t-shirt, like the last time, and Eddie was already in the clothes he liked to wear around the house in the evening, soft sleep pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Richie loved the way he looked in them—touchable, almost cuddly, the way hedgehogs looked inexplicably cuddly despite being covered in knives—and they would be much easier to pull down and back up again than the pants he had worn before. He wondered if Eddie had considered that. He wondered if Eddie had planned it.

“I don’t know if I can do it as long as I did last time,” he said, flexing his hand. “It still kind of hurts.”

“Oh,” Eddie said, pointing his finger at Richie’s chest. “I bought something for that. Be right back.”

He was gone before Richie could process the fact that Eddie had thought ahead and bought something so Richie’s hand wouldn’t hurt while he was spanking, and back again before Richie could really freak out about it, although he let himself have two small internal screams when he saw what was in Eddie’s hand as he sat down on the couch again.

“A paddle?” he asked, reaching for it. It was a thin, firm rectangle of wood with holes in it. The rubberized grip on the handle was comfortable, and without thinking, he brought it down on his own thigh to see how well it worked. The slap was sharp enough to make him jump and then laugh, rubbing the sting away.

“Yeah, it works pretty well,” Eddie said. His eyes were a little glassy already, blinking slow. “You won’t have to do it as long, and it won’t hurt your hand as much.”

“That was very thoughtful of you,” Richie said, weighing it in his hand while he struggled against the urge to pull Eddie close and kiss him on his pointy worried face. “All right. Hop on.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie sighed, but he scrambled to get across Richie’s lap before he leaned back again, his face furiously red. “I’m, uh. I’m hard.”

“That’s okay,” Richie said automatically. He was thankful for the years of stage fright he had learned to mask, because he was pretty sure Eddie could not tell that he was about to faint, his vision going white around the edges before he reminded himself to breathe.

“I can go—” Eddie gestured to the vicinity of the downstairs bathroom. “Um. Take care of it.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Richie patted his thigh again. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Understatement of the century. Millennium. History of time. If he didn’t get to feel Eddie’s dick against his leg in the next minute his DNA was going to cave under the stress and he'd crumple up into a black hole that would eat the solar system. But Eddie bit his lip and looked like he wanted to die of shame, and he realized he might have to give a little—just a little. Just to help Eddie feel better.

“Look, I’m, uh, I’m in the same condition,” he said, trying to catch Eddie’s eye. That was the key to getting through shit, sometimes—just pretending like it was normal until everyone accepted that it was normal. Getting a boner because you were about to spank your best friend? _Normal_.

“You are?” Eddie asked. His expression went from pinched with shame to wide open with shock, and Richie relaxed.

“I mean.” He shrugged. “You’re not the only one who’s kind of into this.”

Eddie gave him a small smile. “Kind of,” he said. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Right. It’s not a big deal,” Richie said. “So get over here and I’ll punish you for being bad.”

Eddie shuddered and the look that swept over his face was surprised and hot, like Richie’s words had hit something really good inside his head. He moved to crawl across Richie’s lap again, and Richie waited until he was on his hands and knees, then forced him down the way Eddie had asked him to do the first time, until he was laid out under Richie’s hands like torture in a circle of hell created specifically for him: the smooth, neat lines of his body under his soft clothes, the soft skin of his ass when Richie tugged down the back of his pants and his underwear, the stiff line of his dick against Richie’s thigh.

“Wait,” he said, pausing and pulling Eddie tighter against him. “What am I punishing you for? For getting hard?”

He heard Eddie’s shaky inhale and patted him on the back.

“No,” he said before Eddie could respond. “I’d never punish you for feeling good, would I? Did you do something bad?”

Eddie twisted around to grab a pillow off the floor and tucked it under his chest with one arm around it, using the other to brace himself against the couch. “I guess I...I didn't talk to you. I was avoiding it.”

“Yeah,” Richie said, turning it over in his head. “You should have told me more about how it felt, how much you liked it.”

Eddie nodded frantically.

“So tell me now,” Richie murmured, running the thin edge of the paddle over the curve of Eddie’s ass to see if it made him shudder again. It did; he moaned into the pillow.

“I—I can’t tell you,” Eddie choked out. “It’s embarrassing.”

Richie smacked his ass sharply three times. The paddle was so light and quick that it seemed like it couldn’t hurt that much, but Richie knew better. Eddie’s breath stuttered out of him hard and he rocked down against Richie’s leg, his erection thick and painful, and the blooming marks on his ass lingered instead of gradually fading.

“Don’t you think I have the right to know?” Richie asked. He was talking nonsense; he did want to know, in great detail, exactly how Eddie felt, but he had grave doubts about Eddie’s ability to form full sentences at the moment, and his own ability to understand them.

“I can’t,” Eddie gasped, rubbing his face against the pillow. He sounded on the verge of tears already. Richie drew back and smacked him a little harder, five, six, seven times, while Eddie writhed against him. He gripped the couch so hard his knuckles were white, pulling on it and crying out when Richie got him hard across both ass cheeks. His hips kept moving even after Richie stopped, and it took him a second to understand that Eddie wasn’t just wriggling around in pain, he was rubbing against him—rubbing his cock on Richie’s leg, already out of his mind with pain and pleasure.

“You can say it,” Richie said, his voice breaking. “Eddie, tell me how it feels. Tell me.”

Eddie’s chest heaved. “I—I—” he sobbed, reaching out blindly with the hand that had been clenched in the sofa, and Richie caught it and slid their fingers together as he brought the paddle down against the backs of his thighs. That really hurt, even through the thin fabric of his pants, if the steel grip on Richie’s hand was anything to go by. Richie kept going, haphazard smacks up and down his legs and across his ass, while Eddie’s grip on his hand tightened and relaxed. Richie’s dick twitched hard in his pants when he realized it was the same rhythm to which Eddie was fucking against his thigh, gracelessly, in between slaps of the paddle. Richie kept straining to hear his broken, rising _oh, oh, oh,_ and forgetting to use the paddle, so turned on he was perhaps the stupidest he had ever been in his life, including the time he had let Steve give him a bunch of Xanax right before a movie premiere.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Richie whispered.

“Yes, _fuck_ ,” Eddie gasped.

“So _tell me_ ,” Richie asked. He set down the paddle and rubbed his thumb over the inside of Eddie’s thigh, just under his ass. The skin was so soft there, a private little area Richie wanted to claim for himself. There weren’t any parts of Eddie that belonged to him, but he thought, somewhat hysterically, that maybe no one else would ever know about this exact spot, how it made Eddie shiver, the way he started to sob when Richie touched him there, slow and gentle while everything else hurt.

“I— _Richie_.” Eddie’s voice rose even higher, and his hand stopped clenching and unclenching and just held onto Richie’s, his fingernails digging in.

“The sooner you tell me, the sooner I stop punishing you,” Richie said, and Eddie gave a low, agonized cry. He picked up the paddle again and hit him quick and hard, raining a flurry of sharp smacks down on his ass that forced him against Richie’s leg over and over.

“I’m gonna come,” he said in a rush. “I’m gonna, uh, _uh_ —”

It took Richie long enough to catch on that Eddie’s hips had pressed down hard against his leg, going still while his moans grew frantic and harsh, before he stopped spanking him. Only the side of Eddie’s face was visible, eyes closed, mouth open, ecstatic. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and he blamed that for the fact that he dropped the paddle again and grabbed a handful of Eddie’s ass, right where he knew it hurt most. Eddie jerked against him with a guttural noise and rode it out, his moaning dying down into loud, trembling gasps when Richie let go and rubbed his hand firmly over Eddie’s ass instead. Eddie buried his face in the pillow and went lax against him, shivering hard when Richie stroked his back.

After a few minutes, Eddie mumbled, “Oh my god.” He reached down to pull his pants up and flopped awkwardly off Richie’s lap and onto the floor. Richie was instantly cold—there was the horrible thud of coming back into himself again, becoming aware of his surroundings, and his shoulders hunched up to his ears as he took in his sweaty shirt, the ache of his dick, the dark, slick patch on his leg where Eddie had—Eddie had—

“It’s okay,” he croaked. Eddie was on his knees, hands covering his face, his back turned to Richie. Richie wanted to reach out and touch him but there was something ferociously contained about him right that moment, and he thought he might get stabbed if he tried.

“Fuck,” Eddie said shakily, standing up and swaying for a moment before he walked out of the room.

Richie leaned his head back on the couch and stared at the ceiling, panting, before he undid his jeans, shoved his boxers down a little and pushed his shirt up, and slid his hand around his cock. It took three strokes, slippery with his own come, before he came onto his fingers and stomach, his teeth clenched against any noises that might slip out. 

*

He heard the shower in Eddie’s room going when he finally got up and decided to do the adult thing and clean the come off his stomach and hand, and then gave up and decided to just shower the entire insane day away. When he had gotten into his pajamas, he checked his phone and saw that Eddie had texted him eight times. What a fucking weirdo, he thought, smiling. He had probably spent his entire shower mentally composing a freakout monologue.

_Hey, I’m sorry for everything that just happened_ , he wrote.

_I didn’t mean to do that. We don’t have to do it again. We can just forget about it._

_Please, let’s just forget about anything that happened in the last two hours._

_Are you okay?_

_Oh, you’re in the shower. Text me when you get out._

_Why do you take such long fucking showers? There’s a drought in California._

The next two texts were links to articles about acceptable water usage in Southern California, to which Richie replied, _Wtf, I was in the shower fifteen minutes and you’re reporting me to LA water & power._

Eddie sent a screenshot of a Wikipedia article about water reclaiming, where he had circled the bit about graywater recycling three times in red. _LOS ANGELES???????_ he had scribbled on it.

This, he thought, was what happened when you left Eddie unsupervised with Google and no home gym to pound it out, or whatever gym bros did. He didn't know; Richie had never talked to anyone at the gym, worried that he would look at a guy in a sweaty shirt and suddenly blurt out that he wanted to suck his balls. It wasn't an unfounded worry. Richie stayed far away from the weight room.

He put his phone in his pocket and wandered down the hall to Eddie’s door.

“Hey,” he called out, tapping on it. “I know you’re already writing a sternly worded email to the fucking city commissioner about unsafe water practices or something. Cut it the fuck out and let me in.”

Eddie opened the door looking ruffled. “I was not writing to the fucking city commissioner,” he said. “It’s Friday night. I’m calling when the office is open on Monday.”

His eyes were swollen again, and Richie shoved both hands in the pockets of his hoodie so he wouldn’t hug him. But Eddie looked down and bit his lip, and Richie was simply not strong enough to withstand that. He nudged Eddie back into his room and put his arms around him carefully. Eddie relaxed against him and Richie rubbed his cheek against the side of Eddie’s head, because that was what he had always done when Eddie hugged him when they were younger. It was the last place he had touched Eddie before they forgot each other—Eddie’s arms fierce around him, his forehead resting against Richie’s shoulder, his voice wobbling over _My mom can’t keep me away from you guys forever_ as Richie rubbed his cheek against Eddie’s temple.

“You were in the shower for like half an hour,” he whispered tenderly into Eddie’s hair. “You runty little hypocrite.”

Eddie laughed into Richie’s hoodie. “I was sitting on the toilet texting you during half of that.”

“I know you were,” Richie said, hugging him tighter. “Tell me what you want, Eds. I’ll forget everything, if you ask me to. But we don’t have to.”

Eddie sighed and shoved his face farther into the curve of Richie’s neck. “I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t—this isn’t like that. Between you and me.”

“I realize that asking you to stop overthinking is like asking me to stop being hilarious and sexually magnetic,” Richie said. “But you really have to stop overthinking it. It just feels good. Let’s just run with that, okay?”

Eddie nodded after a long moment. “You said you liked it too,” he said quietly.

“I do,” Richie admitted. “I, uh, I liked it about as much as you did.”

“Oh,” Eddie said. “ _Oh_. Wow.”

“Yeah.” Richie cringed. “But. Uh. We didn’t finish, did we?”

Eddie pulled away enough to look up at Richie with his big sweet fucking ridiculous eyes. “What?”

“You didn’t ask me to stop,” Richie said. “I don’t think we were done.”

Eddie’s mouth dropped open. In truth, he looked a little dopey, but Richie was big enough to admit he liked that in a man. “No,” he said. “I guess we weren’t.”

“Lie down and I’ll finish,” Richie said, retrieving the paddle from the living room while Eddie got on the bed.

Afterward, after he was finished spreading lotion on Eddie’s cherry red, burning hot skin and had started to rub his back, both of them could barely keep their eyes open.

“Thank you,” Eddie mumbled. “Felt _so_ good.”

“Then I’ll keep on doing it,” Richie yawned. “Just wailing on your ass day and night.”

Eddie fell asleep still smiling, and Richie stumbled back to his room, unconscious before his head hit the pillow. His dreams were warm and pleasant and forgettable, and when he woke up he felt so good he rolled around in his bed for a minute just to hold onto the pleasure of being. He had fallen asleep in his hoodie and his phone had slipped out of the pocket in the night, landing somewhere around his knee. When he found it, he saw Eddie had texted him twenty minutes before.

_I feel fucking amazing again. You?_

He took stock—toes curling happily against cozy sheets, muscles stretching, head quiet, no nightmares—and replied, _Me too. Did we discover the cure for literally every problem in the universe?_

_Yeah we fucking did. Nobel Peace Prize in the bag_ , Eddie wrote. _But it’s your turn to clean up the sushi. You spilled soy sauce on the table. Just so you know._

Richie had a quick, Technicolor sense flashback of the night before—Eddie shivering in his lap just after he had come, his hair a mess and his hand still holding onto Richie’s for dear life—and tossed his phone aside, rubbing his hands over his face. The good feeling didn’t go away, but something else crept in beside it. _Dread_ , he thought. _Let’s call it what it is, that’s dread, because you’re in love with this neurotic dweeb and now—now you know what it would look like if you fucked him, which he does not want you to do._

His old therapist, the one he had stopped going to years before because she was right all the time and it was just fucking uncool of her, would have called it self-sabotage. _True_ , he imagined himself telling her, _but consider this: I love Eddie._ And that was it, the only counterargument that ever needed to be made. When Eddie moved onto the next stage of his life and didn’t need him anymore, it would be okay, because he loved Eddie. He had never hoped for more than being able to hold onto that one bright, beaming thing inside him, steadfast and absolute. The therapist, who would have been shocked that he had finally admitted a feeling out loud, let alone this feeling, would have told him he deserved more than that. And maybe he did, maybe he deserved a requited love, but he knew he would rather have this than some pale second-best emotion with someone who could return it.

“Hey,” Eddie called from the hallway. “If you don’t clean up the sushi, I’m putting your car on eBay.”

“How do you clean up sushi again?” he asked. “Just water and a paper towel, right? I can just mash all the rice and fish and soy sauce into the table top and let it sit for a while, stewing in a bacteria soup. Pretty sure I read that in Martha Stewart.”

“I know what you’re doing, asswipe,” Eddie said. “You think you’re so fucking slick.”

“An old sponge works even better,” Richie said, pretending to read from an article. “Preferably one that’s been used to clean behind the toilets. Mold and urine both have excellent antibacterial qualities.”

He put his hands behind his head and waited for Eddie to bust through the door. His old therapist—June was her name, June Dustin, and when he had said, “That sounds like a porn star name,” she had said, “Maybe, but who cares?” which stumped him; who _did_ care?—was really smart, but she hadn’t understood two very important things: that a slap fight with a boy who pretended he wanted to annihilate you was the purest form of love, and that if the only thing Eddie ever wanted from him was to feel good for a little while, that would always be enough.


	3. Chapter 3

Winter in Los Angeles was a mild thing. Richie felt the same way about it that he felt about evenings. It was something he had dreaded in Maine, with the promise of darkness and holidays where he couldn’t see his friends, returning to school when it was gray and hard outside and the cold felt like it drilled into his entire body, dingy slush and mud and wet feet and always the sense that something was waiting for him when he was alone. December went softly in Los Angeles, with the occasional night where he had to turn on the heat and wear a jacket if he went outside, which he liked. It got dark early but the sun setting over the water was something that always stopped him dead in his tracks no matter how distracted he was by the rest of his life. He could think more clearly—or he could think more, anyway.

And now he had the winter with Eddie.

They had more or less settled into a routine, which felt insane when he thought about what the routine was: every five or six days, Eddie would casually say, while they were eating dinner or watching television, “Um, I think I should probably be punished.”

“What did you do?” he would ask, and Eddie would respond with any number of ridiculous domestic offenses: he had used Richie’s shampoo; he had forgotten to pick up laundry detergent; he hadn’t called his lawyer when he was supposed to. Richie would tell him to get the paddle—the first time he’d gone to get it himself, but Eddie seemed to fall into the right frame of mind faster when Richie made him fetch it—and lay himself out across Richie’s lap, and then Richie would spank him until he told him to stop. He always cried during or after, and Richie accepted eventually that Eddie liked that; he seemed so relieved, even more than he did when he came while Richie was spanking him.

That was a hard-won victory too. When Eddie was finally desperate or brave enough to ask for it again after that first time, he had said, unable to meet Richie’s eyes, “I jerked off earlier so it wouldn’t happen again but I—I like it too much, I guess. We don’t have to.”

He was standing next to Richie, who sat on the couch trying to ignore the heavy outline of his erection even though it was right at eye level. Instead Richie took his hand, and Eddie finally looked at him instead of down at his own feet. His face was full of misery, and Richie knew that yet again he had to break off a part of himself that he had always hoped no one would see and hand it over, and hope Eddie wouldn’t use it to hurt him someday. “I like it,” he choked out. “I told you, I like knowing I’m making you feel good.”

“You are,” Eddie said breathlessly, squeezing his hand.

“No apologies anymore, then, okay?” Richie asked. “It feels good, we both like it. There’s no need to be ashamed. Unless…is that part of it? Does, uh, does it turn you on to have to apologize? You like it when it’s embarrassing, right?”

Eddie shook his head. “Only about the—um. Being spanked. Not about how much I like it.”

“Okay,” Richie said, swallowing hard. “Then don’t. When we do this, we don’t feel bad about anything we want. Deal?”

“Deal.” Eddie tilted his head. “What do you want, Rich?”

Richie closed his eyes for a second. “I don’t want to talk about it. But I’m not gonna feel bad about it right now, and neither should you.”

“Fine. I won’t,” Eddie said, and didn’t let go of Richie’s hand as he tugged him down over his lap.

Richie welcomed the mindless pleasure of giving Eddie what he wanted, especially the next day when Eddie was loose and happy, but in his opinion the best part was the quiet period after they were done, when he was taking care of Eddie and they were both sleepy. There was something about the calm afterward that made it easy to confess, because it didn’t feel like a confession then.

“Are there other kinds of pain you like?” Richie asked one night, smoothing lotion over Eddie’s ass. It had already absorbed into his skin and there was no need for him to keep going, but Eddie groaned in pleasure while Richie was doing it, and he couldn’t bring himself to deny either of them.

“Yeah,” Eddie mumbled. “When I push myself a little too hard at the gym. When I almost come and then I stop.”

“When you what now,” Richie said.

“You know, like you’re almost about to come but you hold off?” Eddie opened one eye to glare at him blearily. “It hurts, but it’s good.”

“Huh,” Richie said, filing it away for the moment he could take a shower and jerk off so fast his arm probably looked like a jackhammer on concrete.

“You’ve never done that?” Eddie asked.

“Pain doesn’t feel good to me,” he said. “It just makes me sad. I’ve had about fucking enough of that.”

“Do you like guys, Rich?” Eddie asked, and Richie waited for the witness protection fantasy, surprised when it didn’t come. He considered deflecting, but they were always so honest with each other here in this space that it felt like it would taint it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Um, only guys, actually.”

“Hm.” Eddie nodded. “I think—I think maybe me too. Just guys.”

Richie cleared his throat, found that he still couldn’t speak, and cleared it again. “Oh,” he said. “Is that why you split up with the missus?”

“Kinda.” Eddie’s voice had turned soft and slurred. “She was so much like my mom. Fuck, pretend I didn’t say that.”

“I absolutely fucking will not,” Richie said. He ran his fingers in light circles over Eddie’s skin, because Eddie liked that. The blankets were soft under them and the light was low, because Eddie liked that. He had set Eddie’s water bottle on the bedside table, and his electric heating pad was next to it, plugged in and ready to go when he woke up in the morning. All these things gave Richie a sort of deep satisfaction that he remembered from his adolescence, when Eddie would sleep over and Richie would do whatever he could to make him want to stay and come back again. Eddie seemed high-maintenance but was actually very easy to please, and Richie liked to please him. He had always wanted Eddie to want things from him, and the blooming buzz of happiness whenever it actually happened—adrenaline that felt like honey and electricity and stuck with him for days afterward, full of himself because he could make Eddie feel good—formed his realization of what love was.

But it hurt to have it acknowledged, so when Eddie sighed in pleasure and said, “You take such good care of me,” Richie patted his back and stood.

“Night, Eddie-pus Rex,” he said, escaped to his room, and then was annoyed at himself for wasting a really fucking good pun on such an awkward moment.

*

Any mention of being punished—needing or deserving it, but especially anyone else knowing he was going to be punished—always made Eddie fucking lose it.

The Losers were coming to visit at the end of January.

These two discrete facts simmered around in Richie’s head for a while before they approached each other and converged.

Finally, two weeks out, with Eddie stretched across his lap, he threw it out like it had just occurred to him. “I wonder if I should spank you the night before the Losers get here, so your ass is sore the whole weekend. I bet they’ll figure out why you can’t sit down.”

Eddie gave a strangled gasp and came silently almost as soon as Richie started to smack him with the paddle, and then, as if to make up for the loss of control, held off asking him to stop until Richie started to get worried.

“I wouldn’t really do it, you know. If you were worried about that,” Richie told him afterward, holding him tight on the couch. “I just knew it would get you going.”

As soon as he had said the words out loud, he wished he hadn’t. He wasn’t entirely sure about the rules they were following, but doing something just to get Eddie off certainly broke them.

“What if I want you to do it?” Eddie asked.

He was always especially dopey just after they were finished, so Richie resumed running his fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and waited a while to see if he’d rethink his statement. “Well,” he said when Eddie didn’t take it back. “What if I did?”

“I’d like it,” Eddie whispered. “I don’t want them to know. But I like the idea of you knowing that it happened, and nobody else.”

Richie imagined his friends in their dining room, loud and happy, talking shit across and over each other, and all the time, looking at Eddie and knowing underneath it all he was falling apart—Eddie catching his eye and letting him know _Yes, it hurts and I like it, and only you know it_.

“Shit,” he breathed. “Okay, yeah.”

“That’s one of my biggest fantasies.” Eddie shifted around, his hip digging uncomfortably into Richie’s for a moment before he squirmed into a better position. “Not people actually knowing, but sort of imagining that they could figure it out. And the whole time, _you_ know and you could tell them.”

“I never would.”

“I know, but you could, and that’s the best part,” Eddie said. He was shivering a little with every pass of Richie’s hand.

“What other fantasies do you have knocking around in your head?” Richie asked. Eddie went quiet for a while, and he jostled him. “There’s a good one, isn’t there.”

“Yeah,” Eddie admitted. “I don’t really want it, but—I wish I could see you spanking me. Like if you filmed it or something, but that would be stupid. I couldn’t enjoy it if we really did that because I’d just be thinking about how some asshole could hack your phone. Your security fucking sucks, by the way.”

“Fuck you, I have all kinds of Mission Impossible shit on there,” Richie said.

“And yet your passcode is still my birthday.”

Richie felt his face grow hot. “Pretty narcissistic to assume it’s your birthday. Maybe it’s the day your mom and I first celebrated our passion for each other.”

“Mm-hmm,” Eddie mumbled. “Shut up, I’m falling asleep and I don’t want to have a nightmare about you fucking my mother.”

*

In the weeks running up to the Losers visiting, he told Eddie he wouldn’t spank him even if he deserved it.

“I’m saving it until the night before they get here,” he said. “Do you think you can handle a bunch of punishment at once? It’ll probably hurt pretty bad.”

He wasn’t sure if Eddie would go along with it, but he had a feeling he’d spoil the surprise completely if he had Eddie across his lap any time before then, and he really wanted to give Eddie something so good he’d always remember it, even after he pulled himself out of his post-divorce funk and moved on from this weird arrangement with Richie.

Eddie looked at him with his eyes huge and longing, but he only nodded. That evening, when they watched Dateline—an Eddie choice that immediately became a Richie choice; his Keith Morrison impression was coming along very well, which had the added benefit of driving Eddie crazy—Eddie scooted closer to him over the course of an episode until he was leaning against Richie’s arm, and finally he sighed and rested his head on Richie’s shoulder.

“You all right?” Richie asked when he could breathe.

“I’m okay,” Eddie said, and he stayed where he was, pressed quiet and warm along Richie’s side, for the rest of the night.

He didn’t stay quiet, though. They were both thrown off, and they were noisy about it. Richie dealt with it by getting out of the house a lot, driving around and stopping at random places to stare at the water, then coming home and annoying Eddie. Eddie dealt with it by hiring a cleaner, whom he followed around with suggestions until she threatened to register a complaint against him, and annoying Richie. They didn’t fight or even bicker so much as snap at each other fruitlessly, picking and picking and picking while Richie told himself to shut the fuck up and couldn’t actually do it. He almost gave in a few times and told Eddie he’d spank him, to make them both feel better, but Eddie’s strange, wild restlessness stopped him.

A week before the visit they had stomped off to their own rooms after a moderate blowout during which Eddie shouted rapid-fire car accident statistics at him because he hadn’t gotten his oil changed in…a while, and Richie shouted made-up sex statistics at Eddie for similar reasons. A few hours later Eddie emerged from his room and found Richie in the kitchen making a sandwich. He didn’t say anything about the fact that Richie liked to put pickles on his grilled cheese, which was an olive branch.

“I’m sorry, dude. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said.

“I do,” Richie said. “You haven’t gotten your ass spanked for a while and we’re both nervous about our dumbass friends visiting. It’s fine. It’s gonna hurt that much more on Friday.”

“What the fuck,” Eddie whispered. Richie turned to find him sagging against the counter, with the achingly desperate look on his face that Richie only saw right before he was about to tell Richie he needed to be punished _right fucking now_.

“Yeah?” Richie asked. “That’s a good one?”

“Yeah, that’s…that’s good,” Eddie said weakly. “I’m going out of my fucking _mind_.”

“Well, only a few more days. You like to wait, right? Because there’s a better pay-off?”

Eddie stared at Richie’s sandwich and visibly shivered. “You don’t like to wait, though. What’s in it for you?”

“I don’t like pain,” Richie said. “I don’t mind waiting. Making you feel good is the opposite of painful for me.”

He had said too much, again. Eddie, with his hands still bracing him against the counter, met Richie’s eyes levelly, though his expression was a little uncertain. But it turned thoughtful after a second. “You’re not just doing this for my sake,” he said. “You really like it too.”

“Wouldn’t do it if I didn’t,” he said abruptly, and fled with his sandwich.

*

Preparing for the night before the visit didn’t take long, and it left him with too much time to think beforehand. He had a full-length mirror, which he’d always kept on the inside of his closet door, and he pulled it out and hung it beside one of his windows, then agonized over whether the bedroom or the living room would be less weird. They’d always done this private thing in a communal space, and it seemed like bringing it into his bedroom would be showing his hand a little too clearly, but the light felt wrong in the living room—it was impersonal and bright everywhere, whereas in the bedroom he could control things so the spotlight fell exactly where it needed to: right on Eddie, so Eddie could see what was happening to him.

Eddie had spent the day with Bill before they went to pick up Mike at the airport together, and Richie forced himself to work instead of going with them because he was full of a specific twitchy agitation that he hadn’t felt in years: the need to do something but without any idea what he wanted to do. He’d come to recognize how dangerous that kind of agitation was after enough speeding tickets, drunk and disorderlies, one-night stands, and broken bones, but it was only now that he remembered enough to connect it to Eddie. God, that itch to _do something_ with him, if not to touch him. It spun him off at all angles like a pinball. He’d had enough trouble expending his energy without adding a boy he liked into the mix, and even though he’d learned how to harness it over the years, Eddie still fucked it all up.

 _On my way home_ , Eddie texted him a little after eight. _Bill and Mike are being weird._

 _Details_ , he texted back.

 _Later_ , Eddie wrote. _I did something bad, Rich. Can we please do something about it tonight?_

He looked at the mirror and swallowed. _When you get home, come talk to me about it in my room_.

He watched the three dots appear and disappear for a few minutes before Eddie finally replied, _Okay_ , and when he heard the outer door open he closed his eyes and took deep breaths until Eddie appeared in his doorway.

“Hi,” Eddie said breathlessly. He looked down at his hand and seemed to realize he still had his wallet and keys, and set them on Richie’s bureau.

“Hi,” Richie said. “I know we haven’t had time to talk about it, but you’ve been bad a lot lately.”

It was amazing—and hot, and gratifying—how quickly Eddie’s face went slack and his breath grew audible, just at those words. “I—I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’ve tried to be good.”

“You are,” Richie said, softening. “You’re such a good boy. It just makes it more obvious when you’re bad.”

Eddie gave him a desperate look. “How are you going to punish me?” he asked unevenly.

Richie nodded toward the mirror. “You’re gonna have to watch while I spank you,” he said, and watched while Eddie realized what that meant, his eyes going wide. His chest was rising and falling like he was on his way to an asthma attack, but Richie waited to see if that was bad or good.

“Where—I—how. How am I gonna watch?” Eddie gasped.

Richie stood and led him to the mirror. “Hands on either side,” he said, and when Eddie only stared at him in the mirror, he took Eddie’s right hand and lifted it up to the wall. Eddie flexed his hand but didn’t move for a moment. Then he undid his pants with his left hand and hesitantly rested it on the other side of the mirror, bouncing just slightly as if testing its structural integrity.

“Like this?” he asked, tense. His entire face was lined with worry, but when Richie looked down he saw that the front of his boxer briefs, visible through the gap of his fly, was so distended he knew it must be painful.

“Yup, like that. And I’m gonna use my hand,” he said. _So I can touch your skin_ , he didn’t add. No need to bring attention to how creepy he felt being by throwing down some Buffalo Bill shit. Eddie had said once that it was a thousand times more embarrassing to be spanked by hand than with the paddle, and as always, Richie had listened to him.

“Rich, I don’t know if I can handle this.” Eddie’s voice broke.

Richie straightened immediately. “We can stop,” he said.

“No, no, no, please,” Eddie gasped. In the mirror, Richie saw how desperate he looked, eyes shut tight, mouth open. The light gray fabric of his underwear was growing wet and dark around the head of his dick. “I’m just gonna fucking break down, I’m so—I’m so turned on. I’m sorry.”

“No apologies. We agreed, right?” Richie said, rubbing Eddie’s back and trying weakly to shove away the hot flare of possessiveness that spiked when Eddie shuddered at his touch. He should be hoping, for Eddie’s sake, that he’d be able to find this with someone else someday, if he ever started dating. He wanted Eddie to be happy, more than almost anything else—but he was selfish, and right now he couldn’t make himself feel bad about it. He wanted to be the only one who could ever give Eddie what he really wanted. He wanted Eddie to know that Richie was the only one who could ever scratch this particular itch, this thing he needed so badly.

“Okay,” Eddie said, ducking his head. “Tell me what to do.”

“Push your pants down,” Richie said, intending for him to slide the back of his pants and underwear over his ass like he always did, keeping everything else covered, but Eddie obeyed him to the letter, shoving everything down to his thighs before straightening up. He met Richie’s eyes briefly in the mirror and then looked away, his face already red.

“Put your hands back on the wall,” Richie said. His voice faltered a little on the word _hands_ , but it didn’t crack, and he was pretty proud of himself for that. He was trying very hard not to look down, but before Eddie leaned forward to put his palms flat on either side of the mirror, he couldn’t help it—his eyes were on Eddie’s hips, the way his shirt lay against his flat stomach, the dark line of hair that grew thicker around his stiff cock. The change in position didn’t obscure it from Richie’s sight—in fact, the light seemed to fall directly on the bared parts of his body in the mirror, his pale thighs and his dick and his balls, drawn up tight. Richie could imagine his hand there, fingers light on him and rubbing the hair against the grain, soft and coarse at the same time, slowly squeezing the base of his dick to help him back down from the edge. If he had Eddie like that, he’d want to give it to him slow, take a long time. Make it hurt a little by drawing it out, the way he liked it.

But he didn’t have Eddie like that, he thought, blinking himself out of the little reverie. He had Eddie like this.

“What is this punishment for?” he asked firmly.

“Because I was…bad,” Eddie said, wincing for a second before he went on. “I—Richie, I don’t know. I can’t think.”

“That’s all right. I know what you did,” Richie said, which made Eddie hang his head with a wild, harsh moan.

There was an element of surrender in it that was almost sexier than the deliberate way he’d revealed his body. He’d always remained hidden from Richie during the act itself, and seeing him uncovered was like a revelation, but it was the way he responded to Richie’s words that really laid Richie open, knowing what Eddie looked like when Richie was overwhelming him. It seemed like it was as painful as the punishment itself; Eddie’s features stood out in sharp relief like he was fighting against something, his hands clenched into fists against the wall, eyes shut tight.

“Don’t close your eyes,” Richie said. “Watch what I’m doing to you.”

“ _Richie_ ,” Eddie groaned, like he was on fire. He opened his eyes anyway, arching back when Richie smoothed a hand over his ass and started to spank him.

He’d learned a lot in the last six weeks. The first time he hadn’t kept his hand loose, and he hadn’t known where it hurt the most. Now he knew exactly where to hit, how hard, how fast—when to stop for a moment and pinch the skin a little to draw it out and localize the pain before he spanked him again to spread it out. The heat of it always got to him, the way his hand glowed and felt like it was transferring warmth to Eddie’s skin while it grew darker and darker pink.

“What am I doing to you?” he asked. Eddie liked to be forced to say it even when he could barely speak. Richie had learned that too. 

“You’re spanking me,” Eddie said.

“Why?”

“Because I need it,” Eddie said, and then, his voice low and thick, “Because I deserve it.”

It was almost like Richie was fucking him; his hips rocked forward the same way, a thin line of come dripping from his cock onto the clothes bunched around his thighs, and each rough smack seemed to loosen him up. Richie could see that he was trying to keep his eyes open as instructed, but they kept fluttering closed while his mouth opened around gasps that grew more and more nakedly sexual as he fell deeper into wherever he went while Richie was spanking him.

“It’s good, isn’t it,” Richie said. “When you get punished, because you deserve it. And now everyone else will know.”

Eddie shook his head, biting his lips frantically. “Don’t tell them.”

“I won’t have to,” Richie said. He knew it was getting Eddie exactly where he wanted it to get him, pressing right down on the buttons that made the embarrassment keenest right as whatever felt good about the pain started to overcome him. “They’ll know just looking at you that you needed to be spanked and I gave it to you.”

“Please,” Eddie sobbed. “Oh god, Rich, please.”

“Or maybe I will tell them,” he panted. It was finally too much for him too, pushing through the strange out-of-body feeling that always fell over him. His dick was pulsing hard along with his heartbeat, his arms and shoulders aching, his entire body bright with feverish love. “They’ll ask if you’re okay and I’ll tell them you’re fine, you just had to be turned over my knee and punished until you cried. Until you lost control.”

Those were the words that always hit hardest, and Richie had used them sparingly until now. Eddie’s sobbing increased until it sounded like he was sprinting uphill. He suddenly froze, his body stiffening in a rigid counterpoint to the impact of Richie’s palm, and his cock began to jerk over and over while come spurted in quick arcs onto his underwear and pants, the floor under him, the mirror. It took everything Richie had not to stop and hold him, to keep going, to push him through it while he stayed locked in silent pleasure that Richie thought must be indistinguishable from pain, from the mingled ecstasy and torture on his face.

At last he sagged, his breath heaving, and Richie finally stopped and reached for him because it looked like he was about to collapse. He was already crying, shocked and messy, before he turned to bury his face in Richie’s shirt, clinging to him. Richie wrapped his arms around him and said nothing, his mind blank.

“You want me to keep going?” he asked when Eddie gave a shuddering sigh and moved enough to rest his forehead on Richie’s chest.

Eddie nodded. “Like this,” he said thickly, and Richie realized he wanted to stay where he was in Richie’s arms. The angle wasn’t right and he couldn’t hit very hard, but he suspected that for once Eddie didn’t care how much it hurt. He wouldn’t let Richie pull away from him to get the paddle, so he held him and meted out short, dull smacks that were almost soothing, mindlessly going on and on until he realized he had no idea how long they’d been doing it.

Finally Eddie lifted his head and said, “Rich, can I touch you?”

Richie shook his head, not comprehending, until he felt Eddie’s hand on his stomach, sliding down to rest on the fly of his pants. The muscles in his abdomen jumped and he could almost feel the phantom pressure of Eddie’s fingers around his dick, which made him close his eyes and hold onto Eddie a little harder for balance.

“You’re so hard. Can I? Please?” Eddie bit his lip. He looked like he was high as a kite, his face flushed and his eyes hot and sleepy.

“You’re pretty out of it, huh,” Richie said, gently drawing Eddie’s hand up to his chest and holding onto it.

“Yeah, but I still want it,” Eddie said. “You’re always so hard, and I want to make you feel good. If you want me to.”

He sounded agonized, like Richie was causing him even more pain, unimaginable pain, by not letting him return whatever favor he thought he owed. Drunk Eddie was always affectionate and sweet like that too—he would get it into his head that Richie needed something and that Eddie had to give it to him, and he’d snuggle himself up into Richie’s space until Richie detached, knowing he’d regret it when he sobered up.

“We’re good,” Richie said. “Come on, buddy, lie down and I’ll get your lotion.”

Eddie let himself be led to his own bed, where Richie tended to him as he always did, but they didn’t speak. Eddie was asleep before Richie had finished, and he left him with a final pat on the ass. In the shower afterward, he leaned his head on the wall and tried not to think about anything that had happened in the last two hours, but as soon as he remembered Eddie’s voice breaking over his name he was gone.

He was hollowed out and melancholy afterward, so exhausted he wrapped his arms around a pillow and fell asleep before any of the late night shows even came on. His television was set to shut off on its own at two in the morning, but he woke when he heard the soft _clink_ and saw Eddie standing beside his bed, holding the remote.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” he asked, shifting from foot to foot like a nervous little dog.

“Yeah, course you can,” Richie croaked, lifting up the blankets and sheets. He felt the bed dip beside him before Eddie bundled himself right into his arms. “You have a nightmare or something?”

“No,” Eddie said quietly. “I just want to be with you.”

“Hmm, you’re warm,” Richie mumbled, pulling him close. Eddie’s hair was a mess under his fingers, and he gave into the urge he never indulged while he was awake and kissed his forehead.

Eddie drew in a stuttering, anxious breath and let it out slowly against Richie’s t-shirt, and then another and another, but he was still shaking a little bit.

“What’s wrong?”

“I,” Eddie began. “You gave me what I really wanted. You always give me what I want. You make me feel so—good. I don’t get it.”

“You deserve it,” Richie said.

“Do I?” Eddie asked.

“More than anyone I know.” He was sliding into sleep again already, but he wanted to impart something very important to Eddie. “You’re _so_ good. Nobody’s as good as you are.”

“Jesus,” Eddie whispered. “Okay.”

“The goodest boy,” Richie said.

“Goodest isn’t a thing,” Eddie said. “Night, Rich.”

*

Eddie was already up and about when Richie woke up, but he wasn’t doing what he usually did in the mornings, which was sitting down just long enough to have his breakfast before he bustled around getting Richie through his own morning routine. Richie, who liked a long quiet breakfast to ease into the day, sometimes got him to relax before nine, but it was always a fight. He had introduced Eddie to his agent, Steve, as Eddie the Roomba, because all he did was ping from room to room looking for things to clean or fix or arrange.

This morning, however, he found Eddie in the dining room with his knees drawn up to his chest, looking soft in a hoodie and pajama pants. Actually, Richie realized with a pang, it was one of his own hoodies. He had expected Eddie to adhere to a rigid separation of their belongings, down to putting his initials on his food items in the refrigerator, but Eddie helped himself to Richie’s things and expected Richie to do the same, which threw him right the fuck off. He loved seeing Eddie in his sweatshirts, into which he disappeared like they were protective armor, but he didn’t know why Eddie had chosen to wear them instead of his own clothes. It seemed like a trap; if he asked about it, he would be admitting that he had noticed, and that was unacceptable.

“Rich,” Eddie said, his eyes big and sleepy, and Richie smiled helplessly and went to him. Eddie wrapped around him with a satisfied sigh.

“You still feel good, huh?” Richie asked, and realized he did too. It was more than his usual cheerfulness the morning after a spanking—he felt a little like he had smoked incredible, grade A weed, right down to the niggling thought that he was going to get busted doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

“I didn’t want to even get out of bed this morning,” Eddie said, nuzzling— _nuzzling_ —against Richie’s neck. He didn’t even know Eddie could nuzzle.

“Um,” Richie said, trying to clear his head. “Everyone’s going to be here in like two hours.”

“Fuck them,” Eddie said, then paused. “Actually, no. We bought two hundred dollars’ worth of breakfast food. Fuck them if they don’t get here on time.”

“There’s my guy,” Richie laughed, and felt too good to freak out over it.

*

The first stop in the loose itinerary for the first morning of the Losers’ visit was brunch at Richie’s place. Richie’s and Eddie’s place. Eddie had said _Hey, you guys should have brunch at our place_ , and Richie had said nothing because he didn’t want to say anything that might prompt Eddie to clarify that he was only there temporarily. He never corrected anyone who called it their house, and he had never said he wanted to move out, but he would. Surely, inevitably, he would leave.

“Richie, this is so nice,” Bev said, which made Richie look around with new eyes. His brain had been one hundred percent Eddie for several months, and even before that he’d taken the house for granted. It was a sturdy, comfortable Spanish Colonial with terra cotta floors and a big fireplace he had never used. Ben said nothing, but he was eyeing it like he wanted to get up inside it and see what it was made of, and Richie made a silent bet with himself that before the weekend was over, Ben would have removed the glass doors and gone exploring.

“Did you expect us to be living in garbage cans like Oscar the Grouch?” Richie asked.

“Well, a little,” Mike said. “Eddie could be Oscar and you could be his little worm friend.”

“His name was Slimey,” Eddie said, and Ben, Bev, and Mike turned to look at him, standing anxiously in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room while everyone else sat at the table.

“Eddie loved Oscar,” Stan said, grinning. “We used to search for him in the trash cans every time we went to the park.”

“Eddie’s an expert,” Richie said. “He’s the one who first called me Trashmouth.”

“I didn’t know that,” Bev said. “Aw, Eds, you loved trash even as a baby.”

The others laughed, but Eddie bit his lip and flushed, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked good; he’d left off most of the gel so his hair was a little fluffy, and he was wearing a thin Henley that highlighted his chest and shoulders in a way that made Richie want to bite his own hands like an animal. He was quiet and jumpy, though. When Ben and Bev had first arrived, it had taken him three tries to go for a hug and then he skittered away too quickly. But it was the Losers. They knew Eddie and loved him. Quiet and jumpy wasn’t going to put them off.

Eddie met Richie’s eyes as soon as the attention was off him, and he didn’t look away. Richie flexed his hand absently and saw Eddie notice it, and for a second the only thing he could think about was the feeling of Eddie’s skin under his fingertips when he rubbed his lower back to help him calm down. Even the presence of his favorite people in the world couldn’t stop the sense memory from rushing in.

“Eds, help me get more champagne from the other fridge,” he said, sounding mostly normal to his own ears. Eddie followed him to the garage, where he stood with his back to the door like they were meeting on a secret assignment.

“There’s like two bottles of champagne inside already,” he said.

“I know, nerd. I just wanted to get out of the house for a second,” Richie said, reaching out to touch his shoulder and then pulling back. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Eddie said fast. “Wait. No. I’m—I’m not fine.”

“Can’t stop thinking about how much your ass hurts?” Richie asked, not without sympathy.

“No,” Eddie said, his eyes downcast. “No, I thought I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about that, but that’s not it. I just feel like I want—I. Richie.”

Richie couldn’t stop himself from putting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder this time, and Eddie pressed into it. “It’s okay. We’re fine. We can totally be normal around our friends.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agreed, his mouth pulled down into a considering frown, and when they brought the champagne in from the garage, he set it on the counter in the kitchen and announced, “I’m normal.”

“You are?” Bev asked. In their absence, their friends had dug into the bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon, capers, onions, and tomatoes Eddie had laid out for them, and found the orange juice and champagne in the fridge. Bill and Mike, Richie noted, weren’t sitting next to each other or talking about ley lines or demons. He vowed to find out why they were being weird as soon as he figured out why he and Eddie were being weird, but first it looked like he was going to have to make it through Eddie’s attempt at keeping a secret. Why had he thought it would be sexy? Eddie started acting like a narc if he even thought about lying.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “My—my therapist says I’m normal.”

Eddie did not have a therapist. Eddie refused to go to a therapist until his divorce was finalized because he thought Myra would find out and take it as a sign of weakness.

“That’s great,” Stan said. “I hear being normal is nice.”

“His name is George,” Eddie said. He grabbed a champagne flute, then sat down beside Richie and hopped up again immediately, looking alarmed. “Um. George McCartney.”

“Definitely a real person,” Richie said, nudging him. He took the glass from Eddie’s fingers and filled it with a little champagne and a lot of orange juice. “Do you want to have a bagel, normal Eddie?”

“I can make it myself,” Eddie snapped, and grabbed a piece of onion from Richie’s plate, shoving it in his mouth and chewing for a second before he realized what he was eating. “What the fuck, Richie.”

“I don’t know, man, you bought the fucking pickled onions,” Richie said.

“You all right, Eddie?” Bill asked mildly.

Eddie jerked and spilled a bit of orange juice. He handed the glass to Richie very formally, like a butler, and said, “Fine. Fine! I’m fine,” before he walked out of the room, down the hall to his bedroom, and shut the door.

“I mean, he’s not _not_ normal,” Ben said after a moment.

Richie waved a hand. “He’s not feeling very well,” he said.

“Wait, did you get him _high_?” Bev asked, delighted. “Richard, did you convince him to do an illegal marijuana in this, the year of our lord 2017?”

“Yes,” he said, seizing on it gratefully. “He had an edible and it was way too much for him. You know Eddie. Two bites and he wasn’t feeling it, so he ate the whole thing.”

“Poor guy,” Ben said. “I gotta say though, stoned Eddie is entertaining.”

“Yeah,” Richie said. “Still kind of like a Roomba, but if somebody spilled water on it and it malfunctioned.”

“You want me to go check on him?” Stan asked.

“No, I got it,” Richie said. “Don’t tell Eddie I told you this, but he also bought two pies, so feel free to accidentally find them in the oven and dig in.”

The bedrooms weren’t nearly far enough away from the dining room for his taste—given the conversation he thought he was about to have, he wished he’d invested in soundproofing. Bev and Stan, at least, were nosy as fuck, and no amount of champagne was going to distract them if Eddie reappeared looking upset in any way.

He opened Eddie’s door with one furtive glance over his shoulder, and Eddie stopped pacing and rushed over to him. All his other worries dropped away as soon as he saw Eddie’s woebegone face, and he met him halfway, wrapping around him tight.

“Rich,” Eddie whispered. “I can’t get my shit together. I feel like my brain is melted.”

“It’s okay, they don’t know anything,” Richie said, rubbing his back. “I told them you were high.”

“You told them I did _drugs_ , Richie?” Eddie’s fingers dug into his shoulders.

“It was actually on the advice of your therapist, Ringo Lennon,” Richie said.

“Fuck you,” Eddie said. “You know I go right to the Beatles when I’m trying to lie.”

“I know you do. It’s really cute and I hope the police never question you about anyone either of us might have killed,” Richie said. He held Eddie tighter and they swayed together for a moment.

“I’m going—I’m fucking going nuts,” Eddie said into Richie’s shirt. “I feel so good. I just want to touch you.”

“I’m so fucking sorry, Eds,” Richie said. “I won’t do this again, not right before we have to hang out with people.”

“No, I—” Eddie tilted his head up, and gave Richie a look so hot he pulled away and took an involuntary step back. “I know you don’t want it, but I can’t stop thinking about touching you.”

“Touching me,” Richie said. “Like. How?”

“I want to—I want to make you feel good,” Eddie said, licking his lips. His ears were red.

Richie put his hands over his face and then slid them into his hair, wanting to pull on it like it would center him, somehow. But his dick had gotten hard so fast he was feeling faint, and Eddie’s chest was heaving like he was physically restraining himself from jumping on him. “Are you sure it’s not just because you’re feeling so good?” he asked. 

“Not _just_ ,” he said. “They’re feeding off each other and it’s making me—I’m sorry. God, fuck, can you just tell them I’m sick and I’ll see them tomorrow? I’m just gonna go to bed.”

“Hey,” Richie said, and took a deep breath before he reached out to grab Eddie’s wrist. “No apologies for what we want. For what we both want.”

“We do?”

Richie gave him a short nod and closed his eyes. “I want it.”

“Then.” Eddie moved closer, putting his hand on Richie’s chest, hot through his t-shirt. “Let me give it to you. Please. You make me feel good all the time, and I want to—can I suck it? Would you let me?”

“Fuck. Yes. Yeah, anything you want.” Richie leaned back against the wall next to the door. A hot shiver ran from his scalp all the way down his body, and he jumped when Eddie’s hands landed on his fly. “Do you really want to?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Eddie hissed. He still looked out of it, but it was blunted by the fiercely intent twist of his lips as he unzipped Richie’s jeans and pushed them down, giving a huff like an annoyed cat when his boxers caught on his dick.

“Try not to castrate me,” he murmured, but Eddie’s hand slid around his dick and it turned into a gasp. Eddie looked down and then back up again, his mouth open and his big dark eyes still stunned and a little wild.

“Oh my god, Rich,” he said, and suddenly got to his knees. “Oh my _god_.”

He was watching Richie, who reached down and pushed his hair off his forehead. “Go ahead,” he said, realizing Eddie was waiting for permission. “I mean, if you want to.”

“I’ve never—but it can’t be that hard, right?” Eddie said, and sucked the head very gently. He made a questioning sound in the back of his throat and sucked harder, and Richie’s breath sobbed in and out like he was crying. When he dared to look down again, he saw Eddie’s eyes were closed, blissful, one hand on the base of Richie’s dick and the other between his own legs, rubbing the heel of his hand there while he jerked his hips upward. Richie felt his soft groans more than he heard them, vibrating around him while Eddie sucked sloppily.

“Hey,” he said. “No touching yourself.”

Eddie pulled off and licked his lips and then the head of Richie’s dick again, like he couldn’t get enough, before he rested back on his heels. “What?”

“You said you like to wait,” Richie said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly so he wouldn’t hyperventilate during what had to be the best moment of his entire life. “So wait.”

Eddie bit his lip and slowly took his hand away, rubbing both palms on his thighs. “Are you telling me I’m not allowed?”

Richie opened his mouth to say no—they’d never talked about whether Eddie liked to be told what to do, and neither of them were very good with authority—but he saw the way Eddie’s hands were clenched. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

Eddie nodded.

“Then yeah. You’re not allowed,” he said, and Eddie surged up and buried his face against Richie’s leg. Richie stroked his thick, soft hair while Eddie’s breath alternately warmed and cooled the fabric against his thigh.

“Okay,” he said eventually. “I’m not allowed. But I still get to make you come, right?”

His mouth was inches away from Richie’s dick, which hadn’t softened at all. “I’m gonna pass out dick-first if you don’t,” Richie said.

Eddie started to suck again in quick pulls that started off at a measured pace and immediately devolved, but when Richie reached down to run his finger along the side of Eddie’s face, he closed his eyes and let himself be guided. Richie didn’t think he was very good at instructing—if Eddie was looking for blowjob tips, the only one Richie had was “be Eddie”—but he caught on pretty fast anyway. He sucked roughly along to the rhythm of Richie’s fingers on his jaw and after a minute or so, his hand slid along the inside of Richie’s leg and then over his balls, a curious, gentle touch. Between that tentative, maddening caress and the sight of Eddie on his knees before him, a little worried line on his forehead like he was going to be tested on it later, Richie was about to come before he’d fully accepted that he was here in this room with Eddie sucking his dick.

“Eds,” he said, trying to give a shaky warning. “I just want you to know you don’t have to swallow. No shame in spitting.”

Eddie glared up at him and forced himself even further between Richie’s legs.

“Seriously,” he gasped. “It tastes so bad. Oh god, _Eddie_. You can stop, I swear it’s okay.”

Richie was far too stupid in the moment for reverse psychology, but Eddie seemed to take it that way anyway and dug in, sucking him through it while Richie tilted his head back against the wall and tried not to scream. The rush of pleasure was so intense that his ears popped, and his hips jerked no matter how hard he tried to still them so he wouldn’t choke the love of his life. He put his arm over his face and muffled the noises he made into the curve of his arm, utterly defenseless, and stayed like that even after he felt Eddie release him and rest his head on his hip.

It took a while for him to come back online. Eddie stood, using Richie’s arm to pull himself up, and Richie finally uncovered his eyes to face him, expecting what he always got from Eddie: pointy, irritated, handsome. But Eddie was a fucking mess; his lips were swollen and slick, his eyes dazed, brimming over almost cinematically.

“ _Eddie_ ,” he whispered, reaching up to cup his face. “What’s wrong?”

“Can you tell me?” Eddie asked, shaking.

“Tell you what?” Richie asked, using his thumbs to wipe Eddie’s face clean of spit and tears. He felt excruciatingly tender, like he had torn off a layer of himself to shelter Eddie under it.

“That I did okay, that I’m—” Eddie cut himself off and looked away.

Richie caught on a beat too late. “That you’re good?” Eddie was silent, but Richie knew. He brought Eddie close enough to tilt their foreheads together. “God, you’re the _best_. I’ve never felt anything so—you’re amazing. You’re a fucking miracle.”

“I’m good,” Eddie said, and Richie nodded and helplessly kissed his eyelids and his forehead and his wet cheeks and finally, although he resisted it, the corner of Eddie’s trembling lips. Eddie turned his head to meet him for another barely-there kiss that they both started away from as if they had been static shocked.

“I’m gonna—” Richie pointed toward the door, zipping up his jeans and shoving his hands in his back pockets.

“Tell them I barfed,” Eddie said. He was touching his lips like he’d never felt them before.

“I’ll tell them you’re shitting your brains out,” Richie said, too loudly, and opened the door and backed out of the room like he was escaping. He didn’t have the presence of mind to look himself over in the bathroom, and realized his mistake when he was already in the dining room and wasn’t sure if he looked like he’d just been fucked or run over by a bus.

“Is he going to be able to go to the beach with us?” Mike asked. The peach and blueberry pies lay in ruins on the table, and he saw four empty bottles of champagne neatly arranged on the counter.

“Let’s be real here, Eddie was never going to the beach with us unless we brought a bubble that he could roll around in like a hamster,” Richie said. “I think he’ll have slept it off by the time we go out for dinner tonight.”

He took his seat at the table again and let Bev pour him a drink, asked if they had left him a single morsel of food in the entire house, and threw a fork at Bill. In five minutes they were absorbed in Derry gossip—a frequent topic among them when their memories returned; Richie was even sort of relieved that he felt the urge to talk shit about what the kids he’d grown up with posted on Facebook, after a lifetime of not remembering or caring about them at all—and no one was looking at Richie.

Except Stan. Just as Mike said, “Okay, I have to tell you guys about Haven,” Stan touched Richie’s hand and gave him a calm look that somehow still stabbed him through.

“Don’t get hurt,” he said eventually.

Richie opened his mouth to say something stupid, but couldn’t do it. His entire body still thrummed with happiness, even as he knew he was approaching some kind of cliff, ready to throw himself off it. “I won’t,” he said. “On purpose.”

“Good,” Stan said, and settled back in his chair before he sat up straight again. “Wait. Mike, I thought Haven was an urban legend.”

“You thought the entire town disappeared after an unidentified aircraft exploded in the sky and it _wasn’t_ aliens?” Mike asked, and for a while at least Richie had more important things to think about than Eddie.

*

Eddie did join them for dinner in the evening, and he let everyone tease him about being stoned—or he did the Eddie version of accepting teasing, which was to get outraged about it and yell at Richie—and everything was the way it had always been.

But it wasn’t, quite. Eddie sat beside him so they hardly looked at each other at all, but he fidgeted through the entire meal. _Oh, every time you move, you think about me_ , Richie thought. He had known this would be the case—had wanted and planned for it—but seeing it play out in front of him, rather than the disaster at brunch, was more than his imagination had accounted for. Sometime before the drinks came out, Eddie tucked two fingers into Richie’s pants pocket, under the table and hidden from anyone’s sight, and he kept them there while they drank and ate and talked. After he was finished with his fries, Richie took a deep breath, heart racing, and reached down to tug Eddie’s hand out of his pocket so he could slide their fingers together. Eddie squeezed his hand but gave no other acknowledgement, even as Richie watched the flush climb up his neck, and Richie didn’t let him go no matter how much his mind clamored at him that his hand was clammy, that someone would see, that Eddie was probably disgusted and when they got home he would explain, nicely, that it was time for him to move out. See you, Richie. It’s been weird.

They didn’t get home until sometime after one in the morning, but he wasn’t tired. Richie didn’t really get tired, except after he had spanked Eddie. Rolling Stone called that freakish energy _part of his_ _dubious charm_ , which wasn’t too bad as backhanded compliments went, but sometimes it was a real pain in the ass because his brain always wanted to keep going even when he knew he needed sleep. Eddie was the same, and at sleepovers he would start off claiming they needed to fall asleep at a reasonable hour, but they were always the only ones still awake at two in the morning, playing Nintendo in the Toziers’ den until Richie’s mother came in and told them to go the fuck to bed.

So Richie didn’t expect Eddie to turn in when they got home, and he didn’t. He said, “I’m gonna clean the kitchen,” and then three minutes later he came back out and said, “Okay, I can’t clean the kitchen. Rich, I have to talk to you.”

Richie had been scrolling through the pictures on his phone, picking out which ones he wanted to upload to Twitter. He and Bev had started posting pictures of themselves and the other Losers and labeling them incorrectly, and he had found a good one of Bill that he intended to tag as Elijah Wood. He reluctantly tapped his screen off. “Okay,” he said. “But just a heads up, I will not help you move out. It’s not that I can’t help. I just don’t want to.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eddie stared at him narrowly. “I’m not moving out, dickhead. Do you want me to move out? Because that’s fucked up. I fucking live here.”

Richie stared at him. “Oh,” he said. “Then what’s your deal?”

“I, uh,” Eddie said, leaning against the between the living room and dining room and then standing up straight and wiping his hands on his pants. “I think I need to not be punished today. I mean, I need to be punished, but like, in a way I don’t enjoy.”

“What did you do?” Richie asked, trying not to smile too fondly.

“I didn’t tell you the truth.”

“About what?” he asked.

Eddie just shook his head, his mouth tight.

“Hey, even if it’s bad, I’d forgive you,” Richie said, which seemed to make it worse because Eddie’s face crumpled. “Don’t be upset. I swear, you could take a dump in my car and I wouldn’t even be mad.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, but it was half-hearted at best. “I didn’t tell you how I was feeling,” he said. “And Bev pointed out that I should tell you because what we’ve been doing—what I’ve _asked_ you to do to me—it’s not just as friends. Not to me.”

“Uh,” Richie said. “You talked about this with Bev?”

“I didn’t tell her you were spanking me,” Eddie said, flushing the way he always did when Richie made him say it out loud. “I just said you were helping me out with something and it—it got sexual, sort of. On my end.”

“Eds,” Richie said slowly. “I can’t help but feel like I’m missing something here.”

“You’ve gone so far above and beyond friendship for me,” Eddie said, sounding like he was reading from a teleprompter. “And I—it’s never been platonic. I mean, I know it got sexual, so you know it turns me on, but it’s you. You turn me on.”

“I,” Richie said, pointing to himself.

“Yeah, you,” Eddie said. He closed his eyes. “I didn’t really realize it until last night, not totally, but I—I have feelings for you. I guess I always did but I didn’t know, I didn’t understand how much I…Anyway. I’m sorry. It’s fucking weird when one person has feelings and the other one doesn’t, but like—”

“How do you know I don’t have feelings?” Richie asked before he could help himself. He stopped, shocked, but it was bursting out of him and he almost—almost—didn’t even want to stop it. “I have so many fucking feelings, dude. Like, since we were kids. Obviously I’m full of shit, but like. Shit _and feelings._ For you.”

Eddie stared at him for a second, his face totally blank. Then, before Richie could take back what he’d said, he was moving across the room, pushing the coffee table out of the way with one foot as he climbed onto the couch, onto Richie’s lap, his hand cupping the back of Richie’s head and his mouth sliding over Richie’s in a kiss that felt like it had been waiting for one of them to find it. Richie wrapped his arms around him and let Eddie take everything he wanted, which turned out to be a lot. He curled into Richie and kissed the life out of him, not stopping, sweet and insistent, smiling when he bit Richie’s lower lip and Richie jumped and moaned breathlessly.

“You're not fucking with me, are you?” Eddie asked, diving back in and kissing Richie’s neck.

“No, dude, I’m in love with you,” Richie said. He winced and waited for Eddie to pull away, but he kept biting along Richie’s neck, attached like a sexy little limpet. He sat up after a minute and put his hands on Richie’s chest, sliding them over to his shoulders and back again while watching in fascination.

“How soon before you’re comfortable taking off your clothes?” Eddie demanded. “Because I’ve been wanting to see this since you banged that stupid gong at the Chinese restaurant in Derry.”

“Uh, now?” Richie felt his voice climb into the high notes. “I can be naked now. Are you sure?”

“I want to fucking _bite you_ ,” Eddie hissed, tugging at his shirt. “Shirt. And pants. And underwear. I want your dick again.”

“All right, yeah, you can have my dick,” Richie said, scrambling to take off his shirt with Eddie still firmly in his lap. “I think we agreed that you’re not allowed to come until I say so, though, didn’t we?”

Richie emerged from his shirt to see that Eddie had gone bright red. “Are you okay with that?” he asked.

“Eds, if you haven’t noticed, I’m okay with anything when it comes to you,” Richie said. “But that specifically, yeah. I’m into it. I’m into all of it, probably way more than you think.”

“Yeah?” Eddie leaned back on Richie’s knees and then, as if helpless to stop, he touched Richie’s bare chest. “What if I wanted you to fuck me tonight? While my ass still hurts from getting spanked?”

Richie arched up against him, groaning at the friction along his cock. “I’m so into it. Do you want to be fucked? Is that how you want it?”

“It’s how I’ve been imagining it.” Eddie brushed his thumbs over Richie’s nipples and gave a quiet little gasp when Richie jerked under him. “Since the first time. When you came into the kitchen the morning after, I wanted you to tell me to get down on the floor so you could fuck me.”

“I can do that now if you want,” Richie said. Carefully, he slid his hands over Eddie’s hips and then his ass, squeezing. Eddie’s thighs went tight around Richie’s legs—fuck, they were like steel—and he bucked forward and back into it, into the pain.

“No, here on the couch,” Eddie said raggedly. “Right here, Rich, okay?”

“I still have to get up so I can get lube and a condom,” Richie said.

Eddie unsteadily swung himself off Richie’s lap. “And a towel.”

Richie stopped at the entrance to the hallway so he could take Eddie in, just in case this whole thing was a hallucination that would disappear when he came back into the room. Eddie was standing beside the couch, fully dressed, like nothing was out of the ordinary. But his dick was stiff and thick along his fly, and the look on his face was familiar from every time he had asked Richie to punish him. That brought him back from incipient panic a little bit. He knew how to give Eddie exactly what he wanted, and he was good at it.

“You should undress while I’m getting stuff,” Richie said. “But keep standing up, and don’t touch your dick. Put your hands behind your back if you have to.”

Searching for a bottle of lube and some condoms that weren’t expired took long enough that he wasn’t quite so frazzled or certain he was going to come in his pants, but all his calm fucked off the moment he stepped back into the living room and saw Eddie standing patiently, his hands folded behind his back in a way that showed off the beautiful muscles in his arms and shoulders and chest, a little dark spot on the carpet between his feet from the wetness steadily dripping from his painfully hard cock.

“You’re so fucking good,” Richie whispered, tossing everything onto the couch and taking Eddie into his arms. He ran his finger along the underside of Eddie’s cock, enjoying the slick smoothness of it and the way Eddie shivered. “You didn’t even come yet, did you? I bet it hurt to make yourself stop.”

“Yeah, god, it still kind of hurts,” Eddie admitted, his voice going really breathless. “It took forever to calm down.”

“I’m gonna make it hurt a lot more,” Richie reassured him, kissing him and rubbing his hands over Eddie’s ass until Eddie was rocking against him and gasping at the friction of Richie's jeans along the head of his dick. Then Richie pulled away, laid the towel down on the couch under Eddie’s approving gaze, and shoved off his socks, jeans, and underwear. He sat down and reached for Eddie, but wouldn’t let him sit. Instead, he pushed Eddie’s legs apart a little, spread some lube over his fingers, and teased him for a minute with light strokes around his entrance. Eddie kept his hands behind his back without being asked, but his knees had begun to buckle by the time Richie pressed his fingers inside, and he was rocking back and forth on his heels to get more when Richie pulled him close with a hand on his sore ass and finally let him climb back into Richie’s lap.

“Can I touch you?” Eddie asked.

“You can always touch me,” Richie said. “Blanket permission, forever.”

“Even when I’m, uh, when you’re punishing me?”

“Even then. Everything I have is yours.” Richie knew, as he said it, that it was the kind of thing that couldn’t be brushed off as a joke, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t had the witness protection fantasy in weeks, he realized; he had gotten himself into a situation where it was more important to stay and let himself be flayed open, if he had to be, as long as Eddie knew how completely he was loved.

And he had to hope Eddie did know he was loved, because he folded against Richie and said, “Richie, fucking _please_ ,” in a voice so abjectly needy that Richie was already reaching for the condom. Eddie had opened up to him in stages over the last few months, so he guessed it shouldn’t have surprised him that when there were no restraints left, he was even sweeter and more responsive than Richie had ever let himself imagine, in a way only Eddie could be, demanding one moment but falling apart as soon as Richie told him what to do. It was almost too much, though, to know that this was what Eddie was like when he wanted Richie to love him.

Richie held him close, cradled him, and fucked up into him slowly while Eddie panted out tight little breaths against his neck.

“How does it feel, sweetheart?” he whispered. “Is it good?”

“It’s good,” Eddie gasped. “It hurts. Not, like, not inside me. Where you spanked me, though. God, it’s fucking good.”

Richie reached down, rubbing the abused skin, and Eddie moaned long and loud into Richie’s neck, rocking down onto his dick helplessly until Richie smacked his ass, hard and stinging and quick. Then he tightened, a hard shiver running through his body.

“I’m gonna come,” he groaned. “Rich, I don’t want to come yet, please, it feels so good.”

“Oh no, this is going to last a while,” Richie said. He pulled out of Eddie and slid his hand between them, beginning to stroke Eddie’s dick, slippery wet, drawing it out with slow, measured movements while Eddie trembled all over. He’d made a mess of Richie’s stomach already, but getting fucked and then spanked made him even wetter, and Richie watched him struggle while he sped his hand up gradually, bit by bit, with a little extra squeeze as his fist glided over the head of his cock because it made Eddie cling to him that much harder. It only took a minute or so for his muscles to start tensing in an unmistakable way, his shuddering breath rising fast, and when Richie knew he was right on the verge of coming, he stopped.

“Fuck, that hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” Eddie gasped into his neck, and Richie nodded, starting again when Eddie had calmed down. He brought him up to the edge once more and stopped, and then again, up and up and up and then stopping, and again, and again. Each time Eddie writhed and sobbed while he was forced to back down from the edge, and then there came a point where Richie didn’t even need to stroke him—all he had to do was rub his thumb over the wet head of Eddie’s cock while Eddie cried out shakily, panicking, every time he was about to come.

“You want me inside you again?” Richie asked, taking his hand away completely, and Eddie clutched Richie’s shoulders hard and nodded, mouthing _yes_. Eddie was wrapped around him so hard that Richie had to physically lift his hips up so he could guide his dick into him. Richie wasn’t certain either of them could make it without coming before he was entirely inside him, but then his hips were flush against Eddie’s ass and he was pulling him down hard, making sure the friction dragged rough against his hot skin. Eddie made short, punched-out, hurt noises whenever he moved, even when all he did was run his hands gently down his sweat-slick back.

“Are you gonna let me come?” Eddie’s voice was so fucked-out he hardly sounded like himself, but it wasn’t a complaint or a demand—he had given the choice to Richie, and Richie knew he wanted him to keep it.

“I don’t think so,” he lied. “I’m gonna come, but you’ll just have to calm down and wait.”

He knew by Eddie’s low, pained cry that he couldn’t wait, and he was proven right immediately. “Rich, I can’t, I can’t stop, I can’t,” Eddie chanted, tightening around him fast and hard until he lost it so completely that Richie, already coming, could barely pay attention to his own pleasure as he watched Eddie’s flood through him. The blissful downward pull through his abdomen and his dick was amazing but it had nothing on Eddie’s face while he arched and came so hard he almost twisted out of Richie’s arms, silent while his body seized. Richie held onto him by the hips and brought him down onto his dick again and again until Eddie was finally able to gulp in enough air for broken, uneven sobbing, and finally he stroked his cock almost soothingly until he collapsed against Richie, trembling all over.

They stayed like that for a long time, while sweat dried in a pleasant, ticklish wave. Richie pressed kisses—worshipful, adoring, ridiculous; he could only give them when he wasn’t looking Eddie in the eye—along Eddie’s shoulder until he realized Eddie was saying something so quietly that his breath barely registered on Richie’s skin.

“Rich, I love you so much I feel like I’m going to explode,” he said.

“I mean, you kinda did.” Richie took the hand that was curled against his chest and brought it to his lips. “You came so hard you hit the couch behind my head, baby.”

“Mm, fuck you,” Eddie said drowsily.

“I’m serious. Good call on the towel but like. We destroyed it,” Richie said.

He volunteered to clean up in the living room while Eddie showered, which he thought was very romantic until he realized he might have to rent a steam cleaner for the couch. By the time he was finished and had cleaned himself off, Eddie was asleep in his bed, wearing his pajama pants and his t-shirt.

“There you are, little thief,” Richie whispered when he crawled under the covers. Eddie smiled without opening his eyes.

“Feels nice to wear your clothes,” he mumbled. “I like to be surrounded by Richie.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Richie said, overwhelmed.

“C’mere,” Eddie said, reaching for him, and played with his hair while Richie rested his head on his chest.

“You ready for Knott’s Berry Farm?” Richie asked, yawning.

“I already told you I’m not going on any of the water rides,” Eddie said. “I know too much.”

“You’re gonna be the first one on the water slides and you fucking know it.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see.” Eddie tugged on his hair, not all that gently. “I have a feeling I’m going to end up holding all your shit while you barf after eating fried dough and going on seven rollercoasters.”

“You don’t know that. Just because it’s happened every single time we’ve gone to an amusement park before,” Richie protested.

“I do know. I’ve analyzed the risks and come to a reasonable conclusion,” Eddie said. “But maybe I’ll go on one with you. And maybe, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll win you a stuffed animal or something.”

“Oh, maybe you will, huh?” Richie stretched and pulled Eddie closer to him.

“Hey,” Eddie said after a few minutes, just as Richie was almost asleep. “You remember right before the first time we, um. Right before that, when we were talking about how everybody else was doing great except us?”

“Yeah,” Richie said.

“Do you think we got rid of some of our baggage finally?”

Richie considered. “Yes,” he said. “I still have some. Like, a suitcase, maybe. Something that fits in the overhead bins. But I don’t feel like I have to carry twenty bags on my back anymore.”

Eddie gave a sleepy sigh. “Me too. That’s exactly how I feel.”

Richie woke a few hours later on his side, entirely wrapped around Eddie. All the things that waited for him in the night, he thought, were still there, and having Eddie with him didn’t make them any less real. He was still a little messed up, or a lot messed up, and he still had things to say to people that he might not be brave enough to say yet, and he still had to deal with the fact that sometimes the world hurt him in some strange mute way, like memories of winter evenings. But the miserable icy fog that had lifted from his mind since Derry had made him remember that winter and darkness didn’t have to be awful, and the night didn’t either, since it brought him this: Eddie breathing beside him, a partner in finding peace. 


End file.
